t 


HD 

I  IT 

V4 


UC-NRLF 


*B   bSfl    ISb 


My  Neighbour's 
idmark 


By,  FREDERICK  VERINDER 


GIFT  OF 
Mill  cent  ^.'".    Shinn 


< 


^^f '  //  CQ/pf-^  /r ,  ^  hz-n  ;tL 


MY  NEIGHBOUR'S 
LANDMARK 

SHORT  STUDIES  IN  BIBLE  LAND  LAWS 


FREDERICK  VERINDER 


WITH  A  PREFACE  BY  THE  VERY  REV. 

G.  W.  KITCHIN.  D.D..  F.S.A.. 

Dean  of  Durham  and  Warden  of  Durham  University. 


JOSEPH  PELS  FUND 
BLYMYER  BUILDING.   CINCINNATI.  OHIO 


FOREWORD 

There  is  need  of  this  book,  and  American  readers 
will  be,  as  were  the  English  readers,  grateful  for  the 
work  that  Mr.  Verinder  has  done.  I  am  confident 
that  everyone  who  reads  it  will  feel  as  I  did,  glad 
of  the  opportunity  for  himself  and  glad  of  it  for 
all  others.  Mary  Fels. 

(Mrs.  Joseph  Fels.) 


948554 


PREFACE 

When  we  meet  with  a  new  interpreter,  eager  to 
impart  a  revelation,  we  set  ourselves  to  challenge  and 
compare  his  impassioned  message  with  the  ruling  spirit 
of  the  age,  the  Zeitgeist,  as  the  Germans  call  it.  Thus 
when  Mr.  Verinder  speaks  of  the  land-usages  and  laws 
of  our  times,  and  sets  against  them  the  ancient  orders 
and  directions  of  the  Pentateuch,  we  are  aroused  at  once 
to  question  and  to  find  out  how  this  new  view  of  pos- 
session and  occupation  fits  in  with  the  dominant  thoughts 
of  today.  From  these  sacred  books  he  builds  a  creed  for 
working  folk:  that  the  earth  is  the  Lord's,  and  that  any 
occupier  who  claims  more  than  the  ancient  Jubilee  gave 
is  a  bold  interloper ;  and  he  bases  on  these  early  Scriptural 
regulations  a  new  brotherhood  between  the  man  of  labor 
and  the  soil  on  which  his  sinews  work. 

There  springs  out  of  his  argument  another  proof  of  the 
universal  nature  of  the  Bible.  It  is  alike  ancient  and 
modern.  He  points  out  to  us  that  private  property  in  land 
is  nothing  but  a  survival  of  privileges  won  by  the  mailed 
fist.  We  know  that  the  first  settlement  of  the  Jews  in 
the  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey  was  really  a  raid 
of  moving  "landgrabbers."  After  their  bad  times  in 
Egypt,  they  fell  on  the  natives  of  Palestine,  drove  them 
out,  and  took  their  place :  as  the  missionaries  of  Jehovah 
they  proclaimed  that  they  had  seized  it  for  His  use  and 
in  His  Name;  and  they  went  on  to  show  the  world  a 
better  way  of  occupation,  and  a  happier  and  more  equable 
Hfe. 

Their  main  principle  was  that  the  holding  of  land,  un- 
like the  owning  of  commodities,  carried  with  it  a  great 
social  duty;  land  is  the  base  of  Hfe,  and  to  till  the  land 
the  first  of  human  tasks;  not  because  a  man  owns  it, 


but  that  he  holds  it  as  a  trust  from  God,  and  must  use 
his  energy  to  coax  the  shy  ground  to  produce  more  and 
more.  This  is  his  duty  before  God,  the  real  Owner  of 
it  all.  If  the  man  is  idle  and  ignorant,  he  will  have  to 
stand  aside  and  starve.  The  State  has  to  see  to  it  that 
the  opportunities  of  the  land  shall  not  be  wasted ;  and  the 
tiller  has  to  do  his  best  "that  two  blades  may  grow  where 
there  was  but  one  before." 

This  book  may  be  called  a  Utopia,  as  being  of  an 
imaginary  aim.  Still  it  is  based  on  the  history  of  the  early 
Jews,  and  the  undeveloped  possibilities  of  a  great  growth 
of  prosperity  from  the  soil,  unique  mother  of  all  produc- 
tion. 

Mr.  Verinder  has  revived  in  our  hearts  an  ancient 
pleasure;  for  he  has  shown  that  the  most  modern  aspir- 
ations breathe  in  the  oldest  Scriptures;  it  is  as  fit  for 
ancient  civilizations  as  for  our  days,  when  we  now  record 
the  triumph  of  Knowledge  over  the  powers  of  Nature. 
For  all  ages,  whether  three  thousand  years  ago  or  today, 
there  is  the  same  hope  ;  the  hope  of  living  in  days  of  happy 
productiveness.  Now  that  what  Cobbett  used  to  call  the 
"great  Wen"  of  London  has  seen  the  growth  of  many 
like  "wens"  all  over  the  country,  we  are  filled  with  a  hope- 
ful longing  for  a  renewed  country-life;  we  discern  that, 
with  better  relations  between  mankind  and  the  land,  we 
shall  attain  to  a  purer  life  in  the  cleanness  of  country 
air,  laboring  there  in  liberty,  self-supporting,  and  reviving 
the  happiness  of  family  life  in  peace.  For  it  prophesies 
to  us  a  new  view  of  civilized  activity,  ohne  Hast,  ohne 
Rast. 

Let  us  welcome  this  interesting  book;  it  releases  us 
from  a  city-made  population,  and  brings  us  back  to  that 
healthy  life,  the  true  heritage  of  a  vigorous  race,  escaping 
from  the  stifling  atmosphere  of  the  hurrying  town. 

G.  W.  K. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Foreword       ........      3 

Preface  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .5 


CHAPTER  I 

BY  WAY  OF  INTRODUCTION 

§  1.  On  "Cursing  one's  Neighbours." — §  2.  The  Appeal  of 
Christ  and  the  Church  to  Moses  and  the  Prophets. — 
§  3.  The  Three  Stages  of  Reform. — §  4.  The  Bible 
as  a  Text-Book  of  Ethics. — §  5.  How  the  Law  was 
handed  down  to  us. — §  6.  The  Modern  Literary 
Criticism  of  the  Pentateuch. — §  7.  Moses  the  Liber- 
ator and  Lawgiver. — §  8.  Hebrew  Land  Laws :  Prin- 
ciples and  Details.  "The  Mother  of  all  Things." — 
§  9.    The   Modern  Application  .  .  .13 


CHAPTER  II 

FIRST  PRINCIPLES:  THE  EARTH  IS  THE 
LORD'S 

No  Private  Property  in  Land. — §  2.  God,  the  only 
Landowner, — §  3.  has  given  the  Land  to  the  Human 
Race. — §  4.  All  Men  and  all  Generations  have  equal 
Rights  of  Use.— §  5.  The  Profit  of  the  Earth  is 
for  All 24 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  MEANING  OF  THE  LANDMARK 


PAGE 


§  1.  The  Conquest  of  Canaan. — §  2.  Hebrew  View  of 
the  Conquest. — §  3.  God*s  Punishment  of  National 
Wrong-Doing. — §  4.  The  Family  and  the  Nation. — 
§  5.  Trade  and  Agriculture  among  the  Hebrews. 
— §  6.  The  Division  of  the  Land. — §  7.  Josephus 
on  Land  Value. — §  8.  The  Landmark  and  its  Mean- 
ing.— §  9.  Naboth's  Vineyard. — §  10.  Micah  and 
the  Land-Grabbers. — §  11.  Sir  Edward  Strachey  and 
Flavins  Josephus  on  the  Landmark. — §  12.  The 
Landmark  in  Modern  England  .  .  .30 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  YEAR  OF  JUBILEE:    LAND  AND  LIBERTY 

§  1.  Landlordism  and  Slavery. — §  2.  No  Involuntary  Pov- 
erty under  just  Social  Conditions. — §  3.  The  Peo- 
ple's Jubilee  in  the  Old  Testament, — §  4,  contrasted 
with  the  Victorian  "Jubilee." — §  5.  Meaning  of  the 
Hebrew  Jubilee. — §  6.  Riches  and  Poverty. — §  7. 
The  Law  of  the  Jubilee.  Compensation  for  unex- 
hausted Improvements. — §  8.  The  essential  Differ- 
ence between  Land  and  Improvements. — §  9.  Prop- 
erty in  Land  is  Property  in  Man  .  .  .46 


CHAPTER  V 

LAND,  LABOUR,  LEISURE  AND  LEARNING 

The  Sabbatical  Cycle  and  the  Hebrew  Holidays. — §  2. 
The  Sabbath  Day:  its  Meaning  and  Use.— §  3.  The 
Relation  between  Labour  and  Rest.  Work  for  All, 
Overwork  for  None. — §  4.  The  Sabbath  Year, — §  5, 
or  Year  of  Release, — §  6,  as  a  Witness  to  Equal 
Rights  in  Land, — §  7,  and  as  a  Provision  for  Na- 
tional Education.— §  8.  What  the  Law  meant  to  the 
Hebrew        .......       59 


8 


.    CHAPTER  VI 
COMPENSATION 

PAGE 

The  Place  of  the  Levites  in  the  Hebrew  Common- 
wealth: their  Functions, — §  2,  and  their  Inheritance. 
— §  3.  The  Meaning  of  the  Tithe.— §  4.  To  whom 
is  "Compensation"  Due? — §  5.  Land  Restoration 
under  Nehemiah  .  .  .  .  .70 


CHAPTER  VII 

JUSTICE 

§  1.  The  Ethical  Significance  of  Christ's  Resurrection, — §  2, 
and  of  the  Deliverance  from  Egypt. — §  3.  The 
Meaning  of  "Righteousness." — §  4.  Justice  the  Foun- 
dation of  all  Law,  Divine  and  Human.  Because 
God  is  just,  the  Law  must  be  just,  and  must  be  justly 
administered, — §  5,  and  Justice  must  rule  all  our 
Social  Relations. — §  6.  The  Messianic  Ideal :  the 
coming  Reign  of  Justice  and  Social  Peace. — §  7. 
The  Christian  Ideal  of  Universal  Justice.  The  Ful- 
filling of  the  Law. — §  8.  Jesus  Christ  and  His 
Apostles  on  Justice. — §  9.  Justice  does  not  permit 
Private  Property  in  Land. — §  10.  "The  Simple  but 
Sovereign  Remedy." — §  11.  The  Parable  of  Naaman 
the  Syrian  .  .  .  .  .  .77 


APPENDIX 

A.  The  Encroachments  of  Injustice    .  .  .  .90 

B.  The  Effects  of  Land  Monopoly     .  .  .  .92 

C.  The  Restoration  of  Equal  Rights  .  .  .97 

D.  The  Coming  Reign  of  Justice         .  .  .  .99 

List  of  Jewish  Authorities  Quoted        ....     103 
Index  of  Names  and  Subjects  ....    110 


ABBREVIATIONS  USED 


Apoc.  .        .    Apocryphal  or  deutero-canonical  books  of  the 

O.T.  (see  vi.  Article  of  Religion), 

A.V.  .  .  .  "Authorised"  Version  of  the  Bible.  The  Eng- 
Hsh  translation  of  1611. 

Eccles.        .        .    The  Book  of  Ecclesiastes   (O.T.). 

Ecclus.  .  .  The  Book  of  the  Wisdom  of  Jesus  the  Son  of 
Sirach,  or  "Ecclesiasticus"    (Apoc). 

Gr.       .        .        .    Greek. 

Hebr.  .        .    Hebrew. 

Heb.     .        .        .     The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  (N.T.). 

Jos.  .  .  .  Flavins  Josephus;  Jewish  historian  and  apolo- 
gist.   Born  37  A.  D.   Wrote  in  Gr. 

LXX  .  .  .  Septuagint;  ancient  Gr.  translation  of  Hebr. 
O.T.  (The  Version  usually  quoted  by  N.T. 
writers.) 

m.        .        .        .    Marginal  readings  of  A.V.  or  R.V. 

n.         .        .        .     Note. 

N.T.     .        .        .    New  Testament. 

O.T.     .        .        .    Old  Testament. 

R.V.  .  .  .  Revised  English  translation  of  O.T.  (1884) 
and  N.T.  (1880). 

Sayings  J.F.  .  "Sayings  of  the  Jewish  Fathers" — Pirke  Aboth, 
or  Chapters  of  the  Fathers :  a  Mishnah  Tract 
in  the  Talmud  (translated  and  edited  by 
Taylor,  2nd  edit.). 

Vulg.   .        .        .    The  Vulgate:  ancient  Latin  Version  of  Bible. 


The  A.V.  is  generally  used  in  the  following  pages,  but  with 
frequent  reference  to  R.V.,  and  especially  to  the  very  helpful 
R.V.m. 

The  author  is  greatly  indebted  to  a  learned  Jewish  friend,  the 
Rev.  B.  J.  Salomons,  of  Montefiore  College,  Ramsgate,  who  has 
kindly  read  the  proofs  with  special  reference  to  the  quotations 
from  extra-canonical  Jewish  writings,  and  has  supplied  some 
additional  material  which  has  been  embodied  in  the  notes.  These 
additions  are  enclosed  in  square  brackets  and  are  marked  5". 


10 


"To  the  law  and  to  the  testimony :  if  they  speak 
not  according  to  this  word,  it  is  because  there  is 
no  Hght  in  them"    (Isa.  viii.  20). 

"They  have  Moses  and  the  prophets;  let  them 
hear  them"    (Luke  xvi.   29). 

"For  the  prophecy  came  not  in  old  time  by  the 
will  of  man :  but  holy  men  of  God  spake  as  they 
were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost"  (2  Pet.  i.  21). 

"For  whatsoever  things  were  written  aforetime 
were  written  for  our  learning,  that  we  through 
patience  and  comfort  of  the  Scriptures  might  have 
hope"   (Rom.  xv.  4). 

"Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall 
make  you  free"   (John  viii.  32). 


11 


MY   NEIGHBOUR'S 
LANDMARK 

CHAPTER  I 

BY  WAY  OF  INTRODUCTION 

"Many  and  great  things  have  been  delivered  unto  us  by  the 
Law  and  the  Prophets,  and  by  others  that  have  followed  their 
steps,  for  the  which  things  Israel  ought  to  be  commended  for 
learning  and  wisdom;  and  whereof  not  only  the  readers  must 
needs  become  skilful  themselves,  but  also  they  that  desire  to 
learn  be  able  to  profit  them  which  are  without,  both  by  speak- 
ing and  writing." — The  Prologue  of  the  Wisdom  of  Jesus,  the 
son  of  Sirach. 

§  1.  It  is  still,  I  believe,  a  popular  superstition  that, 
on  the  first  day  of  Lent  in  each  year,  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land invites  her  children  to  meet  in  their  parish  churches 
for  the  purpose  of  "cursing  their  neighbours/'  No  one 
who  is  familiar  with  the  Commination  Service  will  need 
to  be  reminded  that  this  is  neither  an  accurate  nor  an 
adequate  description  of  the  ''godly  discipline  of  the 
Primitive  Church,"  so  far  as  it  is  somewhat  mildly  re- 
flected in  the  special  service  appointed  for  the  beginning 
of  the  season  of  spiritual  spring-cleaning.  The  cheap 
and  easy  exercise  of  confessing  other  folk's  sins  comes 
too  naturally  to  the  ordinary  man  to  need  a  special  day 
to  be  set  apart  for  it;  he  does  it  most  days  without  the 
stimulus  of  a  solemn  exhortation. 

What  we  are  invited  to  do  on  Ash- Wednesday  is  (not 
to  utter  a  string  of  imprecations  upon  other  ''miserable 
sinners,"  who  are  not  present  to  hear  them ;  but)  to  note, 

13 


for  our  own  warning  and  betterment,  a  number  of  facts. 
The  formula  is  not  ''cursed  be/'  but  "cursed  is/'  We 
are  asked  to  give  our  solemn  assent  to  the  proposition 
that  there  are  certain  offences  against  morals  that,  in  the 
very  nature  of  things,  carry  with  them  a  curse.  The  of- 
fences which  are  specified  are  nearly  all  social  sins — sins, 
which  break  up  the  sacred  family  life;  sins,  which  destroy 
confidence  between  man  and  man ;  sins,  which  poison  the 
fountain  of  justice;  sins  of  taking  a  mean  advantage  of 
one's  fellows ;  sins,  which  deny  fundamental  rights.  The 
avowed  purpose  of  the  service  which  strikes  the  key- 
note of  the  Church's  Lenten  discipline  is,  that,  being  ad- 
monished by  this  terrible  recital,  we  may  "flee  from 
such  vices,  for  which  we  affirm  with  our  own  mouths 
the  curse  of  Gk)d  to  be  due." 

§  2,  Sermons  and  addresses  on  social  subjects  have, 
therefore,  rightly  had  a  notable  prominence  among 
Lenten  observances  for  several  years  past.  No  such 
demonstration  in  favour  of  Social  Reform  has  been  seen 
in  our  time  as  would  take  place  if,  on  any  Ash- Wed- 
nesday, all  the  people  in  every  English  parish  should 
meet,  and  understandingly  and  unfeignedly  give  their 
assent  to  the  series  of  "resolutions"  which  their  parish 
priests  are  instructed  to  move  in  the  parish  assembly, 
and  for  which  the  people  are  asked  to  "vote"  by  saying, 
not  "Aye,"  but  "Amen." 

In  the  very  forefront  of  the  catalogue  of  sins  that 
bring  a  curse — in  the  same  dreadful  list  as  the  "unmer- 
ciful, fornicators,  and  adulterers,  covetous  persons,  idola- 
ters, slanderers,  drunkards,  and  extortioners" — stands 
this— 

"Cursed  is  he  that  removeth  his  neighbour's  landmark. 
And  the  people  shall  answer  and  say,  Amen." 

Nothing  could  more  clearly  illustrate  the  social  purpose 
of  the  Ash- Wednesday  service.  We  are  told  that  this 
is  one  of  the  "sentences  .  .  .  gathered  out  of  the  seven- 

14 


and-twentieth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy."^  Like  her  Lord 
and  Master,  in  the  parable  of  Social  Inequality,^  the 
Church  throws  us  back  on  the  social  lessons  to  be  learnt 
from  the  history  and  laws  of  the  Hebrew  people.  'They 
have  Moses  and  the  prophets;  let  them  hear  them/' 
'Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  destroy  the  law,  or  the 
prophets :  I  am  not  come  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil."^  She 
throws  us  back  on  the  teaching  of  the  Old  Testament 
about  the  Land  Question. 

§  3.  It  has  been  well  said  that  every  great  reform 
has  to  pass  through  three  stages. 

First,  "it's  against  the  teaching  of  the  Bible,"  and  no 
one  will  listen  to  it.  Then,  ''it's  all  very  well  in  theory, 
but  you  can't  carry  it  out" ;  and  practical  politicians  pooh- 
pooh  it  as  visionary  and  Utopian.  Lastly,  when  the  im- 
possible thing  is  done,  "that's  exactly  what  we  have  been 
in  favour  of,  all  along;"  and  all  men  praise  it,  and  take 
credit  for  it.    Especially  the  practical  politicians. 

As  regards  the  great  movement  of  Social  Reform 
which,  in  nearly  every  civilized  country,  is  working  to- 
wards the  abolition  of  private  property  in  land,  we  are 
beginning  to  hope  that  some  of  us,  who  have  taken  part 
in  it,  may  after  all,  live  to  see  it  reach  the  beginning  of 
the  third  stage.  But  although  the  world  as  a  whole  moves 
forward,  some  men  move  more  slowly  than  others ;  and 
there  are  many  who  are  still  struggling  against  doubts 
which  strike  at  the  very  root  of  the  proposed  reform. 
Is  the  proposed  change,  they  ask, — a  change  so  vast  and 
momentous  as  to  amount  to  a  social  revolution, — is  this 
change  in  accordance  with  those  principles  by  which  we 
have  learned  to  judge  what  is  right  and  wrong  in  the 
sight  of  God,  and  between  man  and  man?  And,  for  a 
very  large  number  of  Englishmen,  this  still  means — Is 
it  in  accordance  with  the  teachings  of  the  Bible? 

§  4.  Now,  whether  we  regard  the  Bible  as  a  book 
in  a  special  way  "inspired,"  or  as  a  collection  of  books 

1.  Deut.  xxvii.  17.    2.  St.  Luke  xvi.  19-31.     8.  St.  Matt.  v.  17. 

16 


in  a  special  degree  ''inspiring'';  whether  we  treat  these 
ancient  Hebrew  writings  as  authentic  history  or  as  al- 
legorical tradition,  the  answer  is,  in  either  case,  inter- 
esting and  important.  For  the  traditions,  history,  laws 
and  literature  of  the  Jews  are  better  known  to  most 
Englishmen  than  the  traditions,  history,  laws  and  liter- 
ature of  their  own  nation.  There  is  still,  as  Dr.  Mar- 
goliouth  points  out,^  a  large  class,  "though  smaller  than 
it  once  was,  whose  sole  encyclopaedia,  not  only  of  theology 
and  ethics,  but  also  of  history  and  archaeology,  is  the 
Bible."  For  the  Hebrew  records,  in  their  English  ver- 
sion, have  long  been  the  most  widely  circulated  English 
classic.  It  is  even  "sold  under  cost  price  at  tenpence" 
by  a  great  Society,  solely  devoted  to  its  dissemination. 
Men  who  know  nothing  of  the  Laws  of  their  own  Ed- 
ward the  Confessor,  who  never  heard  that  Edward  I 
was  called  the  English  Justinian,  and  could  not  even 
guess  why  he  was  so  called,  know  at  least  something  of 
the  Laws  of  Moses  and  of  the  reconstructive  work  of 
Nehemiah.  If  we  are  to  learn  from  the  lessons  of  his- 
tory at  all,  here  is  the  best  known  and  most  accessible 
of  all  histories  ready  to  our  hand.  Pliny's  latifundia 
perdidere  Italian  .  .  .  et  privincias^  teaches  the  same 
lesson  as,  e.g.,  Isaiah  v.  8-10,  but  to  English  ears  it  has 
not  the  same  intimate  appeal  to  old-standing  memories 
and  treasured  associations.  Only  a  very  small  number 
of  English  citizens  pursue  their  study  of  moral  principles 
in  the  somewhat  dreary  atmosphere  of  "Ethical"  Socie- 
ties, or  through  the  pages  of  arid  volumes  on  Moral  Phil- 
osophy. But,  to  the  vast  majority  of  our  fellow-country- 
men, the  Hebrew  Bible,  clothed  in  the  beautiful  English 
of  the  Jacobean  translation,  still  holds  a  position  of  pre- 
eminent authority  on  moral  questions. 

§  5.  It  is  quite  possible  to  doubt  whether  Moses  act- 
ually wrote  the  whole  of  the  five  books  to  which  his  name 

1.  Introduction  to  new  edition  of  Whiston's  Josephus  (1906),  p.  ix. 

2.  Plin.,  Nat.  Hist.,  xviii.  7.  3:  "Modum  agri  in  primis  servandum  antiqui 
putayere,  quippe  ita  censebant,  satius  esse  minus  serere  et  melius  arare; 
qua  in  sententia  et  yergilium  fuisse  video.  Verumque  confifentibus  latifundia 
perdidere  Italiam,  iam  vero  et  provincias.  Sex  domini  semissem  Africae 
possidebant,  cum  interfecit  eos  Nero  princeps."  (Cp.  Verg.  Georg.  ii.  412: 
"Laudato  ingentia  rura,  Exiguum  colito.") 

16 


is  attached,  and  to  be  uncertain  whether  there  were  one 
or  two  or  several  'Isaiahs/'  and  yet  to  have  the  highest 
reverence  for  the  ancient  documents,  which  have  brought 
down  to  us,  through  a  thousand  generations,  some  of  the 
earHest  traditions  of  mankind. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  in  these  pages  to  discuss  either 
the  theological  or  the  critical  questions  which  beset  the 
study  of  the  Pentateuch.  The  average  British  Bible- 
reader  knows  little,  and  cares  less,  about  the  dissection 
of  the  "Book  of  Origins"  from  the  ''Book  of  the  Coven- 
ant,'' nor  has  he  so  much  as  heard  of  the  literary  labours 
of  the  "Elohist"  and  the  "J^^ovist."  He  takes  for  granted 
the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  "Five  Books,"  just  as  he 
often  assumes  the  accuracy  of  Bishop  Ussher's  marginal 
dates.  The  modern  literary  criticism  of  the  Pentateuch, 
pursued  with  unflagging  zeal  by  a  multitude  of  scholars 
during  more  than  half  a  century  past,  has  sought,  by  the 
application  to  words  and  phrases  of  much  the  same 
method  of  patient  observation  and  generalisation  as  Dar- 
win applied  to  the  facts  of  Biology,  to  make  these  ancient 
writings  give  up  the  secret  of  their  evolution  into  their 
present  form.  It  is  now  believed  that  the  Pentateuch, 
as  it  has  been  handed  down  to  us  in  the  Jewish  canon, 
is  a  compilation,  or  rather  the  result  of  a  series  of  com- 
pilations ;  that  it  contains  the  work  of  many  writers  who 
flourished  under  the  divided  monarchy,  and  during  the 
Exile.  These  writers  collected,  partly  from  earlier  writ- 
ings, now  lost  to  us,  and  partly  from  stories  handed  down 
by  word  of  mouth,  often  in  verse,^  the  traditions,  folk- 
lore, laws  and  customs  of  their  race.  The  laws  were 
not  only  recorded,  but  annotated,  supplemented,  and  to 
some  extent  adapted  to  the  varying  circumstances  and 
changing  ideas  of  two  or  three  eventful  centuries.  After 
the  fashion  of  Eastern  writers,  these  laws,  in  their  col- 
lected form,  were  attributed  to  the  great  Lawgiver,  Moses, 
exactly  as  even  the  Psalms  which  the  exiles  sang  as 
they  "wept  by  the  waters  of  Babylon"  were  included  in 

1.  e.  g.  the  "Book  of  Jasher"  (Josh  x.  1?,  13;  2  Sam.  i.  18);  "Book  of 
the  Wars  of  the  Lord"  (Num.  xxi.  14);  the  "Song  of  Deborah"  (Judg.  v.), 
etc.  etc. 

17 


one  volume  with  the  "Psalms  of  David" ;  exactly  as  pro- 
verbs of  later  date  were  fathered  upon  Solomon.  The 
documents  thus  compiled,  though  subjected  to  frequent 
editing,  still  largely  preserve,  in  their  combined  form, 
their  individual  peculiarities  of  language,  formula, 
nomenclature  and  standpoint.^ 

§  6.  No  attempt  is  made  in  this  little  book  to  distin- 
guish between  the  various  Hterary  "sources"  of  the  He- 
brew Land  Laws.^  The  material  has  been  drawn  freely 
from  all  of  them.  My  present  purpose  is  simply  to  dis- 
entangle from  the  best  known  of  the  extant  Hebrew 
writings  the  main  lines  of  Hebrew  thought  on  the  Land 
Question.  The  results  are,  on  the  whole,  practically  in- 
dependent of  the  conclusions  of  the  Higher  Criticism; 
for  while  there  may  be  differences  of  detail  between  (say) 
the  Deuteronomic  and  the  "Priestly"  legislation,  there  is 
absolutly  no  difference  in  principle.  The  Torah  or  "Law" 
is,  therefore,  here  taken  in  the  form  which  it  assumed 
when  completely  developed  and  fully  committed  to  writ- 
ing. "For,"  as  is  well  said  by  two  writers  who  may  be 
thought  to  have  pushed  fearlessness  of  criticism  almost 
to  the  point  of  rashness, 

"even  if  die  religious  contents  of  parts  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment in  their  original  form  should  turn  out  to  be  somewhat 
less  rich  and  varied  than  is  agreeable  to  traditional  ideas,  yet 
the  text  in  its  present  form,  even  if  not  the  original,  has  an 
independent  right  of  existence,  and  the  interpretation  put 
upon  this  text  by  Jewish  and  Christian  students  deserves  the 
most  respectful  attention.  The  Old  Testament  was  surely 
not  a  dead  book  to  the  Jews  of  the  great  post-exilic  age,  but 
was  full  of  light,  and  susceptible  of  the  most  varied  and  edi- 
fying adaptations."^ 

For  "the  Jewish  law,  if  it  is  to  be  judged  properly, 
must  be  judged  as  a  whole,  and  not  with  exclusive  refer- 

1.  For  a  very  brief  and  clear  account  of  the  generally  received  results  of 
the  literary  criticism,  see  the  Rev.  Prof.  Bennett's  introduction  to  Genesis 
in  the  Century  Bible;  or  Canon  Ottley's  Short  History  of  the  Hebrews, 
Apps.  I.  and  II. 

2.  See  article  by  Rev.  P.  H.  Wicksteed  on  "The  Year  of  Jubilee"  in 
Christian  Reformer,  August  1887. 

3.  Cheyne  and  Black,  Postscript  to  Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  vol.  iv.,  p.  12 
[1903]. 

18 


ence  to  one  of  its  parts.  ...  In  all  its  stages,  the  Mosaic 
law  held  before  the  eyes  of  Israel  an  ideal  of  duty  to  be 
observed,  of  laws  to  be  obeyed,  of  principles  to  be  main- 
tained; it  taught  them  that  human  nature  Heeded  to  be 
restrained;  it  impressed  upon  them  the  necessity  of  dis- 
cipline."^ 

§  7.  But,  whatever  may  have  been  the  process  by 
which  these  writings  assumed  their  present  form,  they 
are  rightly  called  the  Books  of  Moses,  for  the  great  his- 
torical figure  of  the  Lawgiver  dominates  them  through- 
out, and  alone  makes  them  intelligible.  Moses  nowhere 
claims  the  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  he  would 
have  been  the  last  to  complain  that  some  part  of  the 
legislation  it  contains  should  be  attributed  to  other 
hands.  "Enviest  thou  for  my  sake?''  he  said,  when 
Joshua,  jealous  for  his  chief's  honour,  asked  him  to  rebuke 
some  unauthorized  persons  who  "prophesied"  in  the 
camp;  *'would  God  that  ail  the  Lord's  people  were 
prophets,  and  that  the  Lord  would  put  His  spirit  upon 
them!"^  If  it  was  through  Moses  that  ''the  Lord  gave 
the  word,"  it  is  no  less  true  that  "great  was  the  company 
of  those  that  pubHshed  it."^ 

A  descendant  of  Levi,  nursed  by  his  own  Hebrew 
mother,  though  adopted  by  an  Egyptian  princess  and 
brought  up  as  an  Egyptian.^  Moses  was  familiar  from 
his  earliest  days  both  with  the  traditions  of  the  people 
who  looked  back  to  Abraham  as  their  ancestor,  and  with 
the  culture  of  the  proud  Egyptian  empire,^  under  which 
they  were  being  oppressed.  According  to  Manetho,  he 
was  brought  up  as  a  priest,  and  was  well  acquainted  with 
Greek,  Chaldaean  and  Assyrian  literature.  But  the  ties 
of  blood,  and  his  faith  in  the  God  of  his  fathers,  were 
strong  enough  to  make  him  renounce  the  prospect  of  a 
great  career,  and  to  throw  in  his  lot  with  his  enslaved 

1.  Driver,  on  "Law  in  the  O.  T.,"  in  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible, 
iii.  72  b. 

2.  Num.  xi.  29. 
8.     Ps.  Ixviii.  11. 

4.  Ex.  ii.  1,  9,  10.     Cp.  in  verse  19,  "an  Egyptian  delivered  us." 

5.  Acts  vii.  22.     Cp.  1  Kings  iv.  30;  Isa.  xix.  11,  13. 

19 


kinsmen.^  In  early  manhood,  moved  by  indignation  at  an 
act  of  oppression,  he  killed  an  Egyptian  who  was  ill- 
treating  a  Hebrew,  and  was  driven  into  exile.^  Into 
his  peaceful  and  meditative  life,  as  Jethro's  shepherd  in 
Arabia,  broke  the  Divine  call  to  become  the  deliverer  of 
his  race.^  "The  God  of  thy  father,  the  God  of  Abraham, 
the  God  of  Isaac,  and  the  God  of  Jacob"  is  revealed  to 
him  by  a  Name  with  which  his  Egyptian  learning  must 
have  made  him  already  familiar.^  His  Hebrew  birth  and 
his  Egyptian  education  alike  call  him  to,  and  equip  him 
for,  the  task  of  deliverance.  ''Come  thou,  therefore,  and 
I  will  send  thee  unto  Pharaoh,  that  thou  mayst  bring  forth 
My  people  the  children  of  Israel  out  of  Egypt." 

Whether  Moses,  during  the  educative  and  constructive 
period  of  the  desert  wandering,  laid  down  the  ''Law" 
in  detail  as  we  now  know  it,  or  whether  he  merely  sketch- 
ed broad  outlines,  within  which  a  long  succession  of  later 
legislators  and  teachers  supplied  the  details,  matters  Ht- 
tle.  The  spirit  and  the  groundwork  of  the  Law  is  clearly 
Mosaic.  In  its  differences  from  other  ancient  codes,  no 
less  than  in  its  resemblances  to  them,^  it  witnesses  to  an 
original  which  can  only  be  accounted  for  on  the  assump- 
tion that  Moses  lived,  and  delivered  the  Hebrews  from 
slavery,  and  laid  the  foundation  of  their  national  law ; 
that  he  was  "the  ultimate  founder  of  both  the  national 
and  the  religious  life  of  Israel."^ 

§  8.  It  is  natural  enough  that  Moses  and  the  Prophets 
should  have  a  good  deal  to  say,  and  for  us  to  hear,  on 
the  Land  Question.  For,  so  long  as  man  remains  a  land 
animal,  the  Lawgiver  and  the  Social  Reformer  cannot 

1.  Heb.  xi.  24-27. 

2.  Ex.  ii.  11-15. 

3.  Ex.  iii. 

4.  Ex,  iii.  6,  14.  Deutsch  translates  the  expression  Nuk-pu-Nuk  in  the 
Egyptian  "Ritual  of  the  Dead"  by  "I  am  HE  who  I  am." 

5.  For  instance,  many  of  the  "Mosaic"  provisions  can  be  paralleled  from 
the  Code  of  the  Babylonian  king,  Hammurabi  f — Amraphel,  Gen.  xiv.  9], 
discovered  in  1902;  but  "the  care  taken  by  Israelite  law  to  protect  strangers 
finds  no  parallel  in  Babylonia"  (S.  A.  Cook,  Lazvs  of  Moses  and  the  Code 
of  Hammurabi,  p.  276).  Israel  was  once  a  "stranger"  in  Egypt,  and  "a 
fellow-feeling  makes  us  wondrous  kind." 

6.  See  Canon  Driver,  Literature  of  the  O.  T.,  pp.  152  ff. 

20 


avoid  the  ever-pressing  question  of  the  relation  of  man 
to  land.  Like  some  other  ancient  peoples  (and  some 
modern  ''savages"),  the  Hebrews  saw  clearly  truths  about 
the  Land  Question  which  have  become  obscured  to  most 
of  us  by  the  complexities  of  our  modern  industrial  sys- 
tem. It  is,  of  course,  obvious  that  the  details  of  the  land 
laws  which  Moses  promulgated,  and  to  which  the  Proph- 
ets appealed,  cannot  apply  to  a  nation  so  differently  cir- 
cumstanced as  our  own.  In  considering  the  details,  we 
must  constantly  bear  in  mind  the  circumstances  of  the 
time  and  place,  and  the  history  and  condition  of  the  peo- 
ple. ''The  precepts  then  uttered/'  said  one  of  the  early 
Fathers  of  the  Church,  in  discussing  certain  provisions  of 
the  Mosaic  law,  "had  reference  to  the  weakness  of  them 
who  were  receiving  the  laws ;  since  also  to  be  worshipped 
with  the  vapour  of  sacrifice  is  very  unworthy  of  God, 
just  as  to  lisp  is  unworthy  of  a  philosopher.  ...  Do 
not  thou  then  require  their  excellency  now,  when  their 
use  is  past;  but  then  when  the  time  was  calling  for 
them."^  But  the  principles  which  underlay  those  "pre- 
cepts" are  fundamental  and  immutable,  because  the  rela- 
tion of  man  to  the  land  on  which  he  lives  and  works  is 
always  and  essentially  the  same.  The  earth  is  still  what 
one  of  the  Apocryphal  writers  called  it,  "the  mother  of 
all  things."^  Land  is  still,  as  it  was  in  the  time  of  Moses, 
the  home  and  the  workshop  of  the  human  race,  the  reser- 
voir from  which  human  labour  draws  all  the  raw  mater- 
ials^ wherewith  to  satisfy  its  needs.  "Land  is  perpetual 
man."  "One  generation  passeth  away,  and  another  gen- 
eration Cometh:  but  the  earth  abideth  for  ever."^  The 
Pentateuchal  tradition  recognises,  in  what  has  been  de- 
scribed as  a  "first  attempt  at  organic  chemistry,"  as  clear- 

1.  St.  Chrysostom  on  Matt.  v.  36,  37;  translation  in  Pusey's  Library  of 
the  Fathers,  p.  263. 

2.  Great  travail  is  created  for  every  man,  and  an  heavy  yoke  is  upon  the 
sons  of  Adam,  from  the  day  that  they  go  out  of  their  mother's  womb,  till  the 
day  that  they  return  to  the  mother  of  all  things  (Ecclus.  xl.  1;  and  compare 
the  notes  below). 

3.  Ps.  civ.  14,  15;  Job  xxviii.  1-6;  Deut.  viii.  9. 

4.  Eccles.  i.  4. 

21 


ly  as  the  modern  scientist  does,  that  even  the  materials 
of  which  the  human  body  is  composed  are  drawn  from 
the  land  and  finally  return  to  it.^ 

§  9.  It  is,  therefore,  to  the  underlying  principles  of 
the  Hebrew  social  philosophy,  rather  than  to  the  details 
of  Mosaic  legislation,  that  this  little  work  is  designed  to 
call  attention.  Modern  writers  on  the  Land  Question 
— Gerrard  Winstanley  the  Digger,  Spence  of  Newcastle, 
John  Locke,  William  Ogilvie  of  Pittensea,  Patrick  Ed- 
ward Dove,  Herbert  Spencer  (in  his  earlier  phase),  Al- 
fred Russel  Wallace,  and,  above  all,  Henry  George — 
have,  after  all,  only  restated,  and  attempted  to  apply  to 
modern  social  needs,  principles  which  were  enunciated 
by  Moses  and  enforced  by  many  later  Hebrew  teachers. 
Some  of  them  would  have  readily  admitted  this:  would, 
indeed,  have  gloried  in  it.  It  is  not  without  significance 
that  one  of  Henry  George's  most  telling  and  popular 
lectures  had  as  its  subject,  "Moses."  The  great  Hebrew 
liberator  could  hardly  have  found  in  our  time  a  more 
fitting  and  sympathetic  expositor. 

But,  ancient  as  these  principles  are,  the  most  character- 
istic of  modern  problems — problems  of  poverty  amid  in- 
creasing wealth,  of  housing,  of  unemployment — are  com- 
pelling the  attention  of  social  reformers,  more  and  more, 
to  them.  For,  what  we  call  the  Land  Question  remains 
essentially  the  same  under  everchanging  forms  of  social 
organization.  When  "the  Lord  God  formed  man  of  the 
dust  of  the  ground,"  He  so  formed  him  that  he  could  live 

1.  Gen.  ii.  7  [Hebr.  Adamah-zzzST^ound],  iii.  19;  cf.  Ps.  civ.  29,  cxlvi.  4; 
Job.  xxxiv.  15;  Eccles.  iii.  20,  xii.  7;  and  "For  out  of  [the  earth]  came  all 
[men]  at  the  first,  and  out  of  her  shall  all  others  come  .  .  .  even  so  the 
earth  also  hath  given  her  fruit,  namely,  man,  ever  since  the  beginning,  unto 
Him  that  made  her"  (2  Esd.  x.  10,  14);  "The  Lord  created  man  of  the  earth, 
and  furned  him  into  it  again"  (Ecclus.  xvii.  1,  also  xxxiii,  10,  xl.  1  (quoted 
in  an  earlier  note),  xli.  10;  Wisd.  xv.  8;  1  Cor.  xv.  47-49).  [The  Bible 
asserts  that  God  formed  man  of  the  dust  of  the  ground,  whereupon  the  Hebr. 
commentators  remark:  "The  universal  Father  gathered  dust  from  all  parts 
of  the  earth  for  the  purpose,  to  show  that  man  need  not  be  confined  to  one 
particular  land  or  clime,  but  he  might  claim  the  whole  world  as  his  country 
and  mankind  irrespective  of  class  or  creed  as  his  family." — 5",] 

28 


only  upon  and  from  the  land  whence  he  came.  It  is 
true,  now  as  always  (as  Sir  William  Petty  long  ago  put 
it  in  an  arresting  sentence^),  that  "Land  is  the  mother 
and  Labour  is  the  father  of  all  wealth/'  Many  centuries 
earlier,  the  writer  of  one  of  the  Hebrew  ''wisdom  books" 
had,  as  we  have  already  seen,  proclaimed  the  same  truth. 

1.     Quoted  Karl  Marx,  Das  Kapital,  chap.  i. 


83 


CHAPTER    II 

FIRST    PRINCIPLES:    "THE    EARTH 
IS    THE    LORD'S" 

"Thy  land  which  Thou  hast  given  to  Thy  people  for  an  in- 
heritance."— 1  Kings  viii.  36. 

§  1.  The  general  principles  upon  which  the  Hebrew 
Land  Laws  were  based  are  absolutely  fatal  to  the  idea  of 
private  property  in  land.  It  would  be  too  little  to  say 
that  land  monopoly  was  treated  with  great  severity  by 
the  Law :  the  Law  was  expressly  designed  to  make  it  im- 
possible, for  the  Lawgiver  knew  that  there  can  be  no 
social  justice  in  a  State  while  what  Herbert  Spencer 
called  *'the  equal  right  to  the  use  of  the  earth"  is  denied 
to  its  members. 

§  2.  The  keynote  is  struck  in  the  very  first  sentence 
of  the  Pentateuch.  ''In  the  beginning  God  created  the 
heaven  and  the  earth/'^  and  is  frequently  repeated  else- 
where.^ "The  sea  is  His,  and  He  made  it :  and  His  hands 
formed  the  dry  land."^  "The  earth  is  the  Lord's,  and  the 
fullness  thereof;  the  world  and  they  that  dwell  therein. 
For  He  hath  founded  it  upon  the  seas,  and  established 
it  upon  the  floods."^  "The  world  is  Mine,  and  the  ful- 
ness thereof."^  "Thus  saith  the  Lord,  The  heaven  is  My 
throne,  and  the  earth  is  My  footstool  .  .  .  for  all  those 

1.  Gen.  i,  1,  xxiv.  3;  Neh.  ix.  6;  Ps.  cii.  25,  cxxiv.  8;  Isa.  xlii.  5,  xlv.  12; 
Jer.  X.  12;  Heb.  i.  10. 

2.  It  was  evidently  recognized  as  a  distinctly  Hebrew  belief  (Jonah  i.  9). 

3.  Ps.  xcv.  6. 

4.  Ps.  xxiv.  1,  2;  cp.  1  Cor.  x.  26,  28. 

5.  Ps.  1.  12;  cp.  Ixxxix.  11,  12;  Ex.  xix.  5. 

24 


things  hath  Mine  hand  made.^  God  Almighty  is,  there- 
fore, by  right  of  creation,  the  only  landlord.  When  the 
late  Lord  Salisbury  attempted,  in  the  House  of  Lords,^ 
to  justify  the  preferential  claim  of  the  landlord  over  all 
the  other  creditors  of  the  farmer,  on  the  ground  that 
"the  landlord  furnishes  the  land"  to  the  farmer,  his  state- 
ment would  have  been  regarded  by  the  Hebrew  Lawgiver 
as  blasphemous,  and  would  probably  have  been  character- 
ised by  the  plain-speaking  Amos  in  language  to  which 
most  of  our  newspapers  would  hesitate  to  accord  the 
honour  of  a  verbatim  report. 

§  3.  For,  while  the  class  which  the  late  Lord  Salis- 
bury so  worthily  represented  seems  to  say,  "The  earth 
is  the  (land)  lord's,  and  land  doth  he  'furnish'  to  the 
farmer,''  the  Biblical  reading  is  quite  otherwise.  "In  the 
beginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth."  There- 
fore "unto  the  Lord  thy  God  belongeth  the  heaven,  and 
the  heaven  of  heavens,  the  earth,  with  all  that  therein 
is."^  "The  heaven,  even  the  heavens,  are  the  Lord's; 
but  the  earth  hath  He  given  to  the  children  of  menf'^ 

No  phrase  could  possibly  be  wider  in  its  application, 
or  more  completely  destructive  of  the  claims  of  a  land- 
lord class  to  the  monopoly  of  God's  earth,  than  the  sim- 
ple words  "children  of  men."  Is  there  any  man,  woman 
or  child  who  lives  now,  or  who  ever  has  lived,  or  who 
ever  will  live,  who  is  not  included  among  "the  children 
of  men?"    No:  Jew  or  Greek,  native  or  foreigner,  black 

1.  Isa.  Ixvi.  1,  2. 

2.  In  1885.  Speech  on  the  "British  Agricultural  Association  Bill."  The 
Bill  proposed  "to  enable  a  company  of  capitalists  to  lend  money  to  the 
farmer  against  his  crop,"  the  crop  being  ear-marked,  as  against  other  credi- 
tors, for  the  repayment  of  the  advance.  "But  it  is  to  be  noticed,"  said  this 
sturdy  champion  of  landlordism,  "that  it  is  not  proposed  that  he  (the  capi- 
talist) should  stand  before  the  landlord,  because  that  would  not  be  just. 
Tke  landlord  furnishes  the  land,  and  the  capitalist  the  capital,  and  it  would 
not  be  fair  that  the  capitalist  should  come  and  thrust  the  landlord  aside, 
and  stand  before  him.  The  landlord's  interest  is  saved.  He  has  an  absolute 
veto  on  any  proceedings  under  this  Bill." 

.S.      Deut.  X.  14,  R.  V.;  "heaven  of  heavens"="the  highest  heaven.'*     Cp. 
2   Cor.  xii.  2,   where  "the  third  heaven"  probably   means  the  same  thing. 
4.     Ps.  cxv.  16. 

25 


or  white,  lord  or  peasant,  rich  or  poor^ — all  find,  in  this 
sweeping  generalisation,  the  charter  of  their  birthright 
in  the  soil.  The  simple  and  unlettered  field-worker,  who 
never  heard  of  Herbert  Spencer,  may  yet  deduce  from 
his  Bible  as  good  an  argument  for  the  "equal  right  to  the 
use  of  the  earth"  as  is  to  be  found  in  Social  Statics; 
and  he  will  probably  hold  to  it  more  tenaciously  than  the 
^Terplexed  Philosopher''  did. 

"For  thus  said  the  Lord  that  created  the  heavens ;  God 
Himself  that  formed  the  earth  and  made  it;  He  hath  es- 
tablished it,  He  created  it  not  in  vain.  He  formed  it  to  be 
inhabited:  I  am  the  Lord ;  and  there  is  none  else/'^ 
So,  in  the  Jewish  tradition  of  the  beginnings  of  the  human 
race,  as  in  other  early  traditions,  the  story  begins  with 
a  man  and  a  woman  in  a  garden  ;^  with  Land  and  Labour. 
It  is  the  will  of  God  that  man  should  satisfy  his  bodily 
needs  by  the  exercise  of  his  labour  upon  the  material  which 
He  has  so  abundantly  provided.  "It  is  good  and  comely 
for  one  to  eat  and  to  drink,  and  to  enjoy  the  good  of  all 
his  labour  that  he  taketh  under  the  sun  all  the  days  of  his 
life,  which  God  giveth  him;  for  it  is  his  portion'';  it  is 
the  gift  of  God."^  For  man  is  so  made,  that  he  has  noth- 
ing but  the  land  to  live  from,  nothing  but  labour — his  own 
or  some  one  else's — to  live  by. 

"So  God  created  man  in  His  own  image,  .  .  .  male 
and  female  created  He  them.  And  God  blessed  them, 
and  God  said  unto  them.  Be  fruitful  and  multiply,  and 
replenish  the  earth,  and  subdue  it;  and  have  dominion 
over  the  fish  of  the  sea,  and  over  the  fowl  of  the  air, 

1.  ["This  is  the  book  of  the  generations  of  Adam,"  says  the  Bible;  and 
the  Rabbis  comment:  "Not  rich,  nor  poor,  nor  learned,  nor  unlearned,  nor 
great,  nor  smill,  nor  black,  nor  white,  but  man."  Again  we  are  told:  "In 
the  day  that  God  created  man,"  and  the  Hebr.  sages  explain:  "God  fash- 
ioned Adam  alone,  from  whom  sprang  the  entire  human  race.  Thus  no 
man  can  say,  'I  am  of  a  better  or  earlier  stock.*  "  "And  these  are  the  ordi- 
nances by  which  man  shall  live,"  enjoins  the  Bible;  and  the  Talmud  asserts, 
"Not  the  king  or  prince,  not  the  priest  or  Levite,  but  man.  All  alike  were 
formed   in   the   image   of  God." — S.I 

2.  Isa.  xlv.  18;  cp.  2  Esd.  vi.  55,  59. 

3.  Gen.  ii.  8,  9,  15,  "garden"  (in  LXX,  "paradise")  is  rather  "park.." 
The  corresponding  Hebrew  word  is  so  translated  in  Neh.  ii.  8  [R.  V.  m.] 
and  Eccles.  ii.  5  [R.  V.]. 

4.  Eccles.  iii.  13,  v.  18. 

26 


and  over  every  living  thing  that  moveth  upon  the  earth. 
.  .  Behold,  I  have  given  you  every  herb  bearing  seed, 
which  is  upon  the  face  of  all  the  earth,  and  every  tree; 
...  to  you  it  shall  be  for  meat.  .  .  .  And  God  saw 
everything  that  He  had  made,  and,  behold,  it  was  very 
good.'i 

But  Adam  was  not  the  owner  of  the  Garden  of  Eden ; 
he  only  had  the  use  of  it,  upon  conditions.  When  those 
conditions  were  violated,  "the  Lord  God  sent  him  forth 
from  the  Garden  of  Eden,  to  till  the  ground  whence  he 
was  taken,"  and  to  till  it  sorrowfully  and  in  the  sweat 
of  his  face.^ 

§  4.  If,  therefore,  God,  the  sole  Landowner,  has 
given  the  land  to  ''the  children  of  men" — i.e.  to  the 
whole  human  race  in  its  widest  extension  through  time 
and  space — it  follows  that  no  single  generation,  still  less 
any  single  individual,  has  absolute  ownership  in  land.  It 
is  not  the  right  of  property  in  land,  but  the  right  to  use 
land — limited  by  the  equal  right  of  every  one  else,  now 
and  for  ever,  to  use  land — that  God  has  given  to  man. 
No  man  can  claim  land  as  ''his  very  own,"  "to  do  as  he 
likes  with,"  e.g.  to  sell.  "The  land  shall  not  be  sold 
for  ever;  for  the  land  is  Mine;  for  ye  are  strangers  and 
sojourners  with  Me,"^  saith  the  Lord.  No  man  could 
sell  land  "for  ever;^  for  any  man's  interest  in  it  was  only 
a  life-interest;  a  temporary  usufruct,  and  not  a  perman- 
ent, absolute  ownership.  It  is  only  the  interest  of  the 
race  that  is  perpetual.  "The  days  of  the  life  of  man  may 
be  numbered;  but  the  days  of  Israel  are  innumerable."^ 
For  God  has  given  the  land — i.e.  the  use  of  it — not  to 

1.  Gen.  i.  27-31;  cp.  ix.  1-3;  Ps.  viii.  6-8. 

2.  Gen.  iii.  17-19,  23.     Cp.  Verg.  Georg.  i.  118-46. 

3.  Lev.  XXV.  23. 

4.  R.  V.  gives  "the  land  shall  not  be  sold  in  perpetuity";  Vulg.,  "in  per- 
petuum";  Hebr.,  "to  extinction"  (so  Oehler,  Theology  of  the  O.  T.,  i.  348), 
"out  and  out."  Maimonides  (Tractatus  de  juribus  Anni  Septimi  et  Juhilaei; 
Maius'  Lat.  trans.,  1708)  translates:  "Terram  non  vendito  absolute."  Ac- 
cording to  Hebr.  tradition,  Abraham  bought  land  "out  and  out,"  from  the 
Hittites,  for  a  family  burying-place.  The  detailed  account  of  this  transaction 
(Gen.  xxiJi.)  is  interesting;  note  especially  the  lawyer-like  precision  with 
which  the  subject  of  the  purchase  is  specified  (verses  17,  18)  (xlix.  29-32). 
Jacob  also  bought  land  for  a  sanctuary  (xxxiii.  19,  20;  Josh.  xxiv.  32). 

5.  Ecclus.  xxxvii.  25. 

27 


any  particular  class   or  generation   of  men,  but  to  all 
generations  of  mankind. 

§  5.  Lastly,  ''the  profit  of  the  earth  is  for  all;  the 
king  himself  is  served  by  the  field. "^ 

If  these  be,  as  I  believe  they  are,  the  leading  prin- 
ciples of  the  ancient  teaching  of  ''Moses  and  the  Proph- 
ets" on  the  Land  Question,  the  most  surprising  thing 
about  them  is,  perhaps,  their  modernity.  The  mode  of 
their  expression  is,  of  course,  always  coloured  by  the 
Theocratic  conceptions  of  the  Hebrew  Commonwealth. 
But  when  our  own  great  legal  and  constitutional  author- 
ities tell  us  that  "all  landlords  are  merely  tenants  in  the 
eyes  of  the  law"  f  that  ''the  idea  of  absolute  ownership 
...  is  quite  unknown  to  the  English  law;  no  man  is 
in  law  the  absolute  owner  of  lands,  he  can  only  hold  an 
estate  in  them"  f  that  "the  king,  therefore,  hath  only 
ahsohitnm  et  directum  dominium,  ...  A  subject  hath 
only  the  usufruct,  not  the  absolute  property  of  the  soil"  ;'* 
they  are  only  expressing  in  different  language  the  same 
ideas  as  are  embodied  in  the  passages  of  Scripture  above 
quoted.  The  theory  of  the  old  English  law,  which  vested 
the  ownership  of  the  land  in  the  Crown,  as  the  visible 
embodiment  of  the  claim  of  the  whole  Nation,  genera- 
tion after  generation,  to  "the  land  which  the  Lord  their 
God  hath  given  them,"  resulted  in  exactly  the  same 
negation  of  private  and  individual  ownership  of  land  as 
followed  upon  the  Hebrew  formula,  "The  earth  is  the 
Lord's;  the  earth  hath  He  given  to  the  children  of  men." 
For,  as  the  last  of  the  Theocratic  Republicans  told  the 
Israelites,  "The  Lord  your  God  was  your  King."^  The 
highest  interest  in  land  which  a  Hebrew  could  hold  was 
a  tenancy  in  capita  from  the  Lord  Jehovah,  the  unseen 

1.  Eccles.  V.  9.  So  translated  in  both  the  current  English  versions.  But 
the  R.  V.  m.  gives  as  alternative  readings:  "But  the  profit  of  a  land  every 
way  is  a  king  that  maketh  himself  servant  to  the  field"  (t.  e.  promotes  the 
cultivation  of  the  land) ;  or  "is  a  king  over  the  cultivated  field."  "A  sort 
of  ancient  claim  that  'back  to  the  land'  is  the  only  solution  of  the  social 
problem"   (Prof.  G.   Currie  Martin). 

2.  Joshua  Williams,  On  Real  Property,  ch.  i. 

3.  Ibid. 

4.  Blackstone. 

6.     1  Sam.  xii.  12. 

28 


King  of  Israel.  There  was  no  rent  to  pay,  unless  the 
small  offering  of  first-fruits — a  basket  of  ''the  first  of  the 
first-fruits"  of  all  the  fruit  of  the  earth"^ — be  regarded 
as  a  sort  of  quit-rent, — a  formal  acknowledgment  of 
Jehovah's  absolutism  ct  directum  dominium.  The  Deu- 
teronomic  edition  of  the  Law  does,  in  fact,  prescribe  a 
ritual  for  the  offering  of  the  first-fruits,  in  which  this 
view  is  clearly  and  beautifully  impHed.^ 

So  when  Henry  George,  in  drafting  the  first  manifesto 
of  the  first  National  Society  for  the  propagation  of  his 
teachings,  wrote^  that  ''no  number  of  individuals  can  just- 
ly grant  away  the  equal  rights  of  other  individuals  to 
land,  and  no  generation  can  grant  away  the  rights  of 
future  generations,"  he  was  merely  re-echoing,  as  he 
would  have  been  the  first  to  admit,  some  of  the  most  prim- 
itive doctrines  on  the  Land  Question.  For,  in  the  youth 
of  the  world,  when  the  relation  of  man  to  the  earth  on 
which  he  lived  was  still  simple  and  natural,  it  was  easier 
than  it  is  now  for  men  to  see  the  truth  about  the  Land 
Question  steadily,  and  to  see  it  whole. 

Again,  when  the  modern  Land  Reformer  draws  from 
his  general  principles  the  practical  deduction  that  the 
value  of  land  should  meet  the  cost  of  the  public  ex- 
penses, he  is  only  restating,  in  terms  of  modern  condi- 
tions, the  truth  that  "the  profit  of  the  earth  is  for  all; 
the  king  himself  is  served  by  the  field." 

1.  Ex.  xxii.  29,  xxi<t.  19,  xxxiv.  22,  26;  Lev.  xxiii.  17;  Num.  xv.  19-21; 
Deut.   xviii.    4;   2    Kings   iv.    42;    Neh.   x.    35,    37. 

2.  Deut.  xxvi.  1-11. 

3.  Manifesto  of  the  English  Land  Restoration  League  (now  the  English 
I>eague  for  the  Taxation  of  Land  Values),  1884.  The  League  was  founded  in 
March,  1883. 


29 


CHAPTER  III 
THE    MEANING    OF    THE    LANDMARK 

"The  land  which  I  do  give  to  them,  even  to  the  children  of 
Israel."— Josh,  i,  2,  6,  11,  15. 

"Joshua  took  the  whole  land  .  .  .  and  .  .  .  gave  it  for  an 
inheritance  unto  Israel  according  to  their  divisions  by  their 
tribes."— Josh.  xi.  23. 

"And  ye  shall  inherit  it,  one  as  well  as  another." — Ezek. 
xlvii.  14.  _ 

§  1.  The  Hebrew  history  tells  us  that  the  Law  was 
promulgated  in  the  wilderness  at  a  time  when  the  Israel- 
ites had  as  yet  no  land  of  their  own  to  dwell  in.  Their 
wanderings  at  last  brought  them  to  the  borders  of  the 
land  of  Canaan,  and  within  sight  of  the  fulfillment  of 
the  promise  made  to  the  founder  of  their  race,  the 
Chaldaen  sheikh,  Abraham.  But  they  found  the  coun- 
try already  in  possession  of  a  number  of  tribes — the  oft- 
mentioned  "Hittites,  Amorites,  Canaanites,  Perizzites, 
Hivites,  Jebusites,''  etc.^ — entrenched  in  their  hill-fortress- 
es. Moses  was  dead,  having  only  seen  the  promised  land 
from  afar,  from  Mount  Nebo.^  But  Joshua,  his  appoint- 
ed successor,^  led  the  nation  in  arms  against  the  peoples  of 
Canaan.  The  country  to  the  east  of  the  Jordan  had,  in- 
deed, been  already  conquered,*  and  allotted  to  the  pastoral 
tribes^  of  Reuben  and  Gad,  and  the  ''half-tribe''  of  Manas- 
seh,  on  condition  that  the  warriors  of  those  tribes  assisted 
the  rest  of  the  nation  also  to  win  its  inheritance.  Then 
followed  a  ruthless  war  of  extermination  against  the  peo- 

1.  Ex.  iii.  8;  Josh   xii.  8,  etc. 

2.  Deut.  xxxiv. 

3.  Num.  xxvii.  15-23. 

4.  Num.  xxi.  21-35. 

5.  Num.  xxxii.;  Deut.  iii.  19;  Josh.  xiii.  15-21,  24-32;  Judg.  v.  15,  16. 

30 


pies  in  possession.  With  a  view  to  striking  terror  into 
their  foes,  Joshua  took  and  burnt  Jericho,  utterly  ex- 
terminating its  inhabitants,  and  placing  the  rebuilding  of 
the  city  under  a  ban.^  One  after  another,  Canaanite 
strongholds  were  carried  by  assault,  looted,  and  their 
inhabitants  put  to  the  sword.^  The  Gibeonites,  crafty  in 
diplomacy,  saved  themselves  from  the  general  massacre 
by  entrapping  the  Israelites  into  an  alliance;^  but,  al- 
though their  lives  were  spared,  their  deceit  was  punished 
by  reducing  them  to  a  servile  condition.  The  remnant 
of  the  inhabitants,  who  could  only  be  conquered  grad- 
ually, were  in  later  times  ''put  to  tribute/'^ 

§  2.     The  Hebrew  view  of  the  war  of  conquest  is  well 
expressed  by  one  of  the  later  writers — 

"For  it  was  Thy  will  to  destroy  by  the  hands  of  our 
fathers  both  those  old  inhabitants  of  Thy  holy  land,  whom 
Thou  hatedst  for  doing  most  odious  works  of  witchcrafts, 
and  wicked  sacrifices;  and  also  those  merciless  murderers  of 
children,  and  devourers  of  man's  flesh,  and  the  feasts  of  blood, 
with  their  priests  out  of  the  midst  of  their  idolatrous  creAV, 
and  the  parents,  that  killed  with  their  own  hands  souls  desti- 


1.  Josh.  vi.  21,  24,  26. 

2.  Ai,  Josh.  viii.  21;  Makkedah,  x.  20,  28;  Libnah,  x.  30;  Lachish,  x.  32; 
Eglon,  X.  35;  Hebron,  x.  37;  Debir,  x.  39;  Hazor,  xi.  10,  14  ("neither  left 
they  any  to  breathe").  Josh.  xii.  7-24  gives  a  list  of  thirty-one  petty  "kings" 
smitten  by  Joshua.  "Assyrian  inscriptions  and  portrayals  abundantly  testify 
to  the  barbarous  practices  that  prevailed  in  ancient  Asiatic  warfare,  when 
cities  were  stormed  and  sacked"  (Hastings,  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  iv. 
463^).  See  the  story  of  Adonibezek  (Judg.  i.  3-7).  In  a  note  on  "utterly 
destroy"  (="ban"  or  "devote"),  the  Rev.  Prof.  H.  Wheeler  Robinson 
(Century  Bible  at  Deut.  xx.  17)  says:  "The  same  word,  with  the  same 
meaning,  occurs  in  the  inscription  of  Mesha  (Moabite  stone),  where  Mesha 
says  that,  having  captured  Nebo  from  Israel,  he  slew  the  whole  of  its 
seven  thousand  inhabitants,  and  dragged  the  vessels  of  Yahweh  [Jehovah] 
before  his  god  Kemosh  [see  1  Kings  xi.  7],  because  he  had  'devoted*  it  to 
Ashtar-Kemosh."  For  a  later  attempt  to  lessen  the  horrors  of  war,  see  Deut. 
XX.  10-20,  xxi.  10-14.  On  the  interesting  question  of  the  relation  between  the 
story  of  the  Conquest  as  told  in  Joshua,  and  the  fragments  of  another  and 
probably  older  tradition  embodied  in  Judg.  i.  1-ii.  5,  recent  commentators 
should  be  consulted. 

3.  Josh.  ix.  3-27. 

4.  Josh.  xvii.  13;  Judg.  i.  27-36.  Solomon  put  them  to  forced  labour  in 
the  building  of  the  Temple,  etc.  (1  Kings  ix.  20,  21 ;  2  Chron.  ii.  17,  18,  viii. 
7,  8).  Part  of  the  territory  of  Dan  was  not  conquered  till  much  later  (Judg. 
xviii);  Jebus  (Jerusalem),  not  till  the  time  of  David  (2  Sam.  v.  6;  1  Chron. 
xi.  4).     See  also  1  Chron.  iv.  89-43,  v.  10-22. 

31 


tute  of  help;  that  the  land,  which  Thou  esteemedst  above  all 
other,  might  receive  a  worthy  colony  of  God's  children."i 

§  3.  Not  only  the  sacrifice  of  children,  but  also  the 
degradation  of  both  men  and  women,  seem  to  have  been 
inseparable  from  the  obscene  ritual  with  which  the  local 
Baals  were  worshipped.  It  is  only  when  one  realises 
that  the  sins  which  have  linked  the  memory  of  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah  with  undying  infamy  wxre  part  of  the  relig- 
ious rites  of  the  Hebrews'  Semitic  neighbours,^  that  it  is 
possible  to  understand  the  savage  hatred  with  which  the 
Hebrew  lawgivers  and  reformers  assailed  the  idolatry 
which  came  so  near,  in  their  eyes,  to  being  the  unpardon- 
able sin.  It  brought  in  its  wake  *'red  ruin  and  the  break- 
ing up  of  laws.''  It  was  more  than  a  rival  cult;  it  was 
the  negation  of  moral  and  social  order.  There  was  no 
remedy  for  it  but  the  extermination  of  all  its  professors. 
The  Israelites  conceived  themselves  as  the  instruments 
chosen  and  used  by  Jehovah  to  this  end.  ^'Conduct, 
character,  is  the  one  end  of  the  Mosaic  system.  The 
heathen — the  Canaanite  nations  especially — are  punished 
not  for  false  belief,  but  for  vile  actions."^ 

But  behind  the  mission,  there  always  lurked  the  ques- 
tion, Qitis  custodiet  ipsos  ciistodesf  The  leaders  of  He- 
brew thought  had  no  hesitation  as  to  the  answer.  It  is 
one  of  the  most  insistent  notes  in  Jewish  literature.  The 
Law  which  prescribed  equal  weights  and  measures  for 
buying  and  selling  between  one  citizen  and  another ;  which 
had  only  "one  manner  of  law"  for  the  home-born  citizen 
and  the  alien  immigrant;^  could  not  possibly  fail,  in  a 
matter  of  such  supreme  importance,  to  apply  the  same 
law  to  the  Israelite  as  to  the  Canaanite.    If  Israel  polluted 

1.  Wisd.  xii.  3-7.  There  are  many  references  in  the  O.  T.  to  the  sacri- 
ficing of  children  to  the  local  deities,  most  frequently  in  connection  with  the 
adoption  of  the  practice  by  the  Israelites  in  imitation  of  their  neighbours.  See 
Lev.  xviii.  21-30,  xx.  1-5;  Deut.  ix.  4,  5,  xii.  31;  2  Kings  xvi.  3,  xvii.  17, 
xxi.  6;  2  Chron.  xxviii.  3,  xxxiii.  6;  Ps.  cvi.  34-39;  Jer.  xxxii.  35;  cp.  Mesha's 
sacrifice,  2  Kings  iii.  26,  27. 

2.  Lev.  xxi.  9;  Deut.  xxiii.  17,  18;  1  Kings  xiv.  24,  xv.  12,  xxii.  46; 
2  Kings  xxiii.  7;  Mic.  i.  5,  7;  Hos.  iv.  13,  14. 

3.  Bp.  Westcott,  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  p.  139.  He  quotes  Deut.  xii.  81; 
Lev.  xviii.  24  ff. 

4.  Deut.  XXV.  13,  14;  Lev.  xxiv.  22. 

32 


the  land  as  his  predecessors  had  done,  his  fate  would  be 
as  theirs.  The  Israelites  may  have  been,  at  times,  a  little 
too  conscious  that  they  were  "the  salt  of  the  earth." 
But  there  were  always  some  among  them  who  real- 
ised that  ''if  the  salt  have  lost  his  savour,  it  is  thence- 
forth good  for  nothing  but  to  be  cast  out,  and  to  be 
trodden  under  foot  of  men."^  The  legislators,  the  chron- 
iclers, the  reformers  and  the  poets  of  Israel  tell  their  peo- 
ple, in  passages  far  too  numerous  to  be  fully  quoted  or 
even  referred  to  that  drought  and  dearth,^  disease  and 
pestilence,^  civil  war  and  the  breaking-up  of  the  national 
unity ,^  defeat  before  invading  enemies,^  and,  finally,  cap- 
tivity and  exile  ;^  the  ''four  sore  judgments''  of  Ezekiel — 
"the  sword,  and  the  famine,  and  the  noisome  beast,  and 
the  pestilence'"^ — were  God's  appointed  punishments  for 
the  Israelites,  if  they  lapsed  into  the  idolatry  which  was 
the  butt  of  the  bitterest  satire  of  their  religious  and  polit- 
ical teachers,^  or  committed  the  social  injustices  against 
which  the  stern  prohibitions  of  the  Law  and  the  Proph- 
ets were  directed.^ 

There  is,  indeed,  at  bottom,  but  little  distinction,  at 
least  in  Christian  theology,  between  these  two  deadly  sins. 
For  the  "covetousness"  which  the  Decalogue  forbade,^^ 
and  which  the  prophets  denounced^^  as  the  root  cause  of 
social  robbery,  of  dire  poverty  amid  increasing  wealth,^^ 
is  bluntly  described  by  St.  Paul  as  "idolatry,"^^  "a  root 
of  all  kinds  of  evil,"  by  which  men  are  "led  astray  from 

1.  Matt.  V.  13. 

2.  1  Kings  xvii.;  Jer.  viii.  13,  xiv. 

3.  Ex.  xxxii.  35. 

4.  1  Kings  xi.  30-33. 

5.  Jer.  xix.  6  flF. 

6.  Deut.  iv.  25-28;  1  Chron.  v.  25,  26;  2  Chron.  xxxvi.  14  ff.;  Ezra.  v. 
12,  ix.  7;  Ezek.  xxxix.  23;  2  Esd.  xiv.  28-33;  and,  generally.  Lev.  xx.  22, 
xxvi.  14-39;  Deut.  viii.  19,  20;  Ps.  Ixxviii.  55-64;  Dan.    ix.  4-15;  Jude  5,  7. 

7.  Ezek.  xiv.  21;  cp.  Jer.  xv.  3. 

8.  See,  for  instance,  Isa.  xliv.  9-20;  Hos.  viii.  6;  Hab.  ii,  18-20;  Wisd. 
xiii.  10-xiv.  2. 

9.  Jer.  V.  1-6,  vi.  11-13,  vii.;  Ezek.  xxii.  29,  31;  Zech.  vii.  8-14;  Hab.  i. 
1-6,  etc. 

10.  Ex.  XX.  17;  Deut.  v.  21. 

11.  Mic.  ii.  2;  Hab.  ii.  9;  Jer.  vi.  12,  13,  xxii.  17;  cp.  Ps.  x.  3;  Prov.  xxi. 
25,  26. 

12.  See  Rev.  A.  C.  Auchmuty,  Dives  and  Pauper,  sermon  I. 

13.  Col.  lii.  5;  Eph.  v.  3,  5;  Rom.  i.  25,  29;  cp.  Mark  vii.  22;  Luke  xii.  15. 

33 


the  faith/'^     The  Christian  who  was  a  ''fornicator,  or 
covetous,  or  an  idolator,"  was  excommunicate.^ 

§  4.  According  to  the  Hebrew  theory  of  landholding, 
as  we  have  seen,  God  was  the  only  absohite  Owner  of 
land,  while  all  God's  children  had  equal  rights  in  the  use 
of  it.  "God,  the  King  of  the  people,  is  the  real  Pro- 
prietor of  the  land,  and  He  gives  it  to  the  people  only 
as  beneficiaries."^  ''What  would  now  be  called  State- 
loan  land,  or  royal-loan  estates,  was  at  that  time  regard- 
ed as  being  more  directly  Jehovah's  estates,  as  hereditary 
land  which  the  individual  had  on  loan  from  Jehovah."^ 

The  method  by  which  these  principles  were  carried  in- 
to practice  was,  of  course,  largely  determined  by  the  spec- 
ial circumstances  and  needs  of  an  Eastern  people,  settling 
in  a  fertile  land :  "a  good  land  and  a  large,  a  land  flow- 
ing with  milk  and  honey  ;^  "a  good  land,  a  land  of 
brooks  of  water,  of  fountains  and  depths  that  spring  out 
of  valleys  and  hills;  a  land  of  wheat,^  and  barely,  and 
vines,  and  fig-trees,  and  pomegranates;  a  land  of  oil 
olive,  and  honey;  a  land  wherein  thou  shalt  eat  bread 
without  scarceness,  thou  shalt  not  lack  anything  in  it; 
a  land  whose  stones  are  iron,  and  out  of  whose  hills  thou 
mayst  dig  brass.""^ 

The  method,  too,  was  strongly  influenced  by  two  great 
Hebrew  conceptions:  that  of  the  family^  as  the  unit  of 
the  Nation ;  and  that  of  the  Nation  itself  as  a  larger  fam- 
ily— the  children  of  Abraham — closely  bound  together 
by  a  common  descent  and  a  common  religion.  "The 
land  w^hich  the  Lord  thy  God  hath  given  thee"  was  not  a 

1.  1  Tim.  vi.  10  [R.V.];  cp.  "Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  mammon.  And 
the  Pharisees  also,  who  were  covetous,  heard  these  things:  and  they  derided 
Him"  (Luke  xvi.  13,  14). 

2.  1  Cor.  V.  10,  11,  vi.  9,  10;  cp.  2  Pet.  ii.  14. 
8.      Oehler,  Theol  of  the  O.  T.;  i.  348. 

4.  Ewald,  Antiquities  of  Israel  (English  trans,  of  3rd  ed.),  178  n. 

5.  Ex.  iii.  8,  17;  Num.  xiv.  6-8;  Jer.  xi.  5,  etc. 

6.  For  the  exportation  of  agricultural  produce  from  Palestine,  see  Ezek. 
xxvii.  17;  2  Chron.  ii,  10. 

7.  Deut.  viii.  7-9;  cp.  i.  25;  xi.  9-12;  Ezek.  xx.  6,  15;  Neh.  ix.  25. 

8.  See,  for  instance,  Ex.  xx.  5,  6;  Lev.  xx.  5;  Num.  i.  2;  Deut.  v.  9,  10, 
xxv.  10  (where  "house"  means  "household,"  "family,"  as  in  Ex.  i.  21) ; 
1  Sam.  XX.  6;  2  Kings  ix.  26;  Jer.  ii.  4.  Of  the  tribe  as  a  larger  family,  Judg. 
xiii.  2  (Dan),  xvii.  7  (Judah).  Owing  to  the  practice  of  polygamy  and  the 
inclusion  of  slaves,  the  Hebrew  "family"  was  larger  than  ours  (Job  i.  3;  Jud. 

34 


mere  fagon  de  parler  to  the  Hebrew ;  he  conceived  of  his 
nation  or  race,  "Israel/'  as  a  collectivity,  almost  as  a  per- 
sonality. *'When  Israel  v^as  a  child,  then  I  loved  him, 
and  called  My  son  out  of  Egypt.^  God  had  given  the 
fertile  land  of  Canaan  to  the  v^hole  Hebrew  nation  as  a 
common  heritage,  in  which  every  family  of  the  common- 
wealth had  equal  rights. 

§  5.  The  problem  which  the  Mosaic  Law  set  itself 
to  solve  was,  therefore:  How  to  secure,  at  least  within 
the  limits  of  the  Hebrew  Commonwealth,  to  each  family 
and  to  every  generation,  the  equal  right  to  the  use  of 
''the  land  which  the  Lord  their  God  had  given  them." 
The  social  organisation  of  the  Hebrews  was  on  such  a 
primitive  model  that  the  problem  was  comparatively  free 
from  complications.  They  were  almost  entirely  an  agri- 
cultural and  pastoral  people;  a  republic  of  farmers  and 
shepherds.  After  the  conquest  they  dwelt  in  valliges^ 
of  tents :  the  "fenced  cities"  of  the  Canaanites  which  had 
been  captured  had  been  destroyed;  many  others  were 
still  in  Canaanite  hands :  so  that,  in  case  of  a  PhiUistine 
or  Midianite  raid,  the  Israelites  had  to  take  refuge  in 
caves  or  mountain  fastnesses.^ 

There  was  no  strong  central  government.  Sea-going 
commerce  was,  during  all  their  earlier  history,  practical- 
ly. 10).  The  family  tie  bound  the  next-of-kin,  in  case  of  need,  to  redeem  a 
man's  inheritance  (Lev.  xxv.  25;  Ruth  iv.  1-10;  Jer.  xxxii.  6-12),  or  his 
person  (Lev.  xxv.  47-49),  and,  if  he  were  murdered,  to  take  up  the  blood- 
feud  (Gen.  ix.  5,  6;  Ex.  xxi.  12;  Deut.  xix.  6;  2  Sam.  xiv.  6,  7).  In  earlier 
times  the  family  as  a  whole  could  be  punished  for  the  offense  of  one  of  its 
members  (as  Achan,  Josh.  vii.  20,  24;  cp.  Gen.  xliv.  16,  17),  but  the  Deuter- 
onomic  legislation  forbade  this  (Deut.  xxiv.  16;  2  Kings  xiv.  6),  and  some  of 
the  prophets  protested  against  it  (Jer.  xxxi,  29,  30;  Ezek.  xviii.  1-4).  The 
passionate  desire  of  the  Hebrews  for  children  (Ps.  cxxvii.  3-5),  which  finds 
frequent  and  often  pathetic  expression  in  the  literature,  had  a  curious  legis- 
lative outcome  in  the  law  of  the  Levirate  marriage  (Deut.  xxv.  5-10;  Matt, 
xxii.  23-27;  Luke  xx.  27  ff.).  The  "first  commandment  with  promise" 
(Eph.  vi.  2)  makes  continuance  in  the  land  dependent  upon  the  proper  main- 
tenance of  the  family  organisation   (Ex.  xx.  12;  Deut.  v.  16). 

1.  Hos.  xi.  1,  and  Ex.  iv.  22,  23;  cp.  "thy  brother  Israel"  (Num.  xx.  14); 
"thy  brother  Jacob"  (Obad.  10);  "King  of  Jacob"  (Isa.  xH.  21). 

2.  Judg.  V.  7;  cp.  2  Kings  xiii.  5.  "To  your  tents,  O  Israel,"  long  re- 
mained the  formula  of  dispersion  in  defeat  or  revolt  (1  Kings  xii.  16; 
2  Chron.  x.  16;  cp.  1  Sam.  iv.  10,  xiii.  2;  2  Sam.  xviii.  17,  xix.  8,  xx.  1,  22; 
1  Kings  viii.  66;  2  Chron.  xxv,  22).  Later  we  sometimes  find  "every  man  to 
his  city"  (1  Sam.  viii.  22;  1  Kings  xxii.  36;  Ezra  ii.  1;  Neh.  vii.  6). 

3.  Judg.  vi.  2;  1  Sam.  xiii.  6. 

35 


ly  interdicted  to  them  by  the  fact  that  the  northern  ports 
of  the  Mediterranean  coast  were  in  the  possession  of 
the  Phoenicians,  while  in  the  south  the  Phillistine  immi- 
grants "from  Caphtor"^  held  the  maritime  plain,  with  its 
seaports  from  Gaza  to  Joppa,  and  commanded  the  main 
caravan-route  between  Syria  and  Egypt.  Even  in  the 
first  century  of  the  Christian  era,  Josephus  gives  this 
fact  as  the  reason  why  the  Hebrews  were  less  known 
to  the  Greeks  than  were  the  Phoenicians  and  the  Egypt- 
ians. ''We  neither  inhabit  a  maritime  country,"  he  says, 
"nor  do  we  delight  in  merchandise,  nor  in  such  inter- 
course with  other  men  as  arises  from  it,  but  the  cities  we 
dwell  in  are  remote  from  the  sea,  and,  having  a  fruitful 
country  for  our  habitation,  we  take  pains  in  cultivating 
that  only.''^  There  is  said  to  be  no  native  Hebrew  word 
for  seaport.^ 

Internal  trade  also  appears  to  have  been  carried  on 
mainly  by  the  aborigines.'*  Mining  and  manufacture,  as 
we  know  them,  were  practically  unknown  to  the  Israel- 
ites; the  metals  appear  to  have  been  mostly  imported.^ 
Always  excepting  the  tribe  of  Levi — to  be  specially  con- 
sidered in  Chapter  VI. — there  was  virtually  only  one 
class  among  the  Hebrews,  the  great  mass  of  working 
farmers  and  shepherds.  Gideon  was  "threshing  wheat  by 
the  winepress'*  when  the  messenger  of  Jehovah  called 
him  to  deliver  the  people  from  the  Midianite  invader.^ 
Even  after  he  had  been  anointed  king  by  Samuel,  and 
the  choice  had  been  ratified  by  a  vote  of  the  people,  Saul 

1.  ?  Crete.     Deut.  ii.  23;  Amos  ix.  7;  Josh.  xiii.  2-6;  Judg.  i.  31. 

2.  Against  Apion,  i.  60. 

3.  The  first  notice  of  an  Israelite  navy  is  in  the  time  of  Solomon  (1  Kings 
ix.  26).  It  had  its  headquarters  at  Ezion-Geber,  at  the  head  of  the  Gulf  of 
Akabah,  a  branch  of  the  Red  Sea.  Tyrian  sailors  had  to  be  imported  to  in- 
struct the  Hebrews  in  seamanship  (2  Chron.  \iii.  18,  ix.  21). 

4.  See  Isa.  xxiii.  2,  8,  11  (R.  V.  m.)  and  18.  Ewald  conjectures  that 
Maktesh  (in  Zeph.  i.  11)  was  the  Phoenician  quarter  of  Jersualem.  In  Prov. 
xxxi.  24,  ''merchant'"  is,  in  the  original,  "Canaanite"  [R.  V.  m.];  much  as, 
in  modern  times,  "Jew"  has  sometimes  been  used  for  "money-lender"  or 
"usurer."  So  also  R.  V.  m.  in  Hos.  xii.  7;  Zech.  xiv.  21;  Ezek.  xvi.  29,  xvii. 
4.  The  merchants  in  Jerusalem  after  the  return  from  captivity  were  Tyrians 
(Neh.  xiii.  16)  In  earlier  times,  we  read  of  caravans  of  fshmaelites  (or 
Midianites)  trading  in  spices  and  slaves  (Gen.  xxxvii.  25,  27,  28,  36, 
xxxix.  1). 

5.  But  see  Deut.  viii.  9. 

6.  Judg.  vi.  11. 

3G 


had  to  be  summoned  from  his  farm — as  Cincinnatus  was 
called  to  deliver  the  Romans  from  the  Aequians — to  raise 
the  siege  of  Jabesh-Gilead.^  David  was  ''keeping  the 
sheep/'  when  he  was  selected  as  Saul's  successor.^  Elisha 
was  "plowing  with  twelve  yoke  of  oxen  before  him," 
when  the  prophet's  mantle  fell  upon  him,^  and  Amos, 
the  great  Radical  reformer,  was  ''an  herdsman,  and  a 
dresser  of  sycamore  trees  ;^  and  so  on.  Uzziah,  among 
the  later  kings,  was  distinguished  by  his  love  of  hus- 
bandry.^ "Hate  not  laborious  work,"  so  said  "a  man  of 
great  diligence  and  wisdom  among  the  Hebrews,"  "neith- 
er husbandry,  which  the  Most  High  hath  ordained."^ 

§  6.  What  the  Israelites  required,  therefore,  in  order 
to  embody  in  practice  the  general  principle  that  God  had 
given  them  equal  rights  to  the  use  of  the  earth,  was  that 
the  Law  should  secure  them  the  right  of  equal  access  to 
the  land  of  Canaan  for  the  purpose  of  exercising  their 
labour  upon  it.  The  land  belonged  in  usufruct  (subject  to 
the  sovereign  rights  of  the  unseen  King)  to  the  whole 
Nation;  every  family  in  the  Commonwealth  had  equal 
rights  in  it.  The  natural  and  easy  way  for  giving  effect 
to  those  equal  rights,  under  the  circumstances  of  their 
time  and  place,  was  by  an  equal  division  of  the  land 
itself  among  all  the  families  of  Israel. 

The  process  by  which  the  division  was  to  be  carried 
out  was  prescribed  beforehand  by  Moses.  A  census  of 
the  people,  by  tribes  and  families,  was  taken  in  the  plains 
of  Moab  on  the  south-eastern  border  of  the  promised 

1.  1  Sam.  xi.  5. 

2.  1  Sam.  xvi.  11. 

3.  1  Kings  xix.  19. 

4.  Amos  i..  1,  vit.  14  (R.  V.). 

5.  2  Chron.  xxvi.  10. 

6.  Ecclus.  vii.  15.  The  honour  in  which  agriculture  was  held  is  curi- 
ously shown  in  some  of  the  provisions  of  the  Law,  e.  g.  Deut.  xx,  6  (exemp- 
tion from  military  service),  xx.  19,  20  (fruit  trees  not  to  be  cut  down  even 
to  serve  the  exigencies  of  a  siege,  but  cp.  2  Kings  iii.  19,  25).  The  story  of 
Cain,  who  was  "a  tiller  of  the  ground"  and  afterwards  "builded  a  city" 
(Gen.  iv.  2,  17;  co.  iii.  17-19,  viii.  21;  2  Esd.  vii.  11-14),  probably  embodies 
the  traditions  and  prejudices  of  the  earliest  Israelites  in  their  nomad  stage, 
when  the  patriarchs  wandered  from  place  to  place  with  their  flocks  and 
herds — the  "wandering  Aramaeans"  of  Deut.  xxvi.  5  (R.  V.  m.);  Gen.  xlvi. 
32,  34.  According  to  Josephus  (Antiq.  1.  ii.  54,  62),  Cain  was  the  first  to 
enclose  and  plough  land.  A  similar  significance  may  attach  to  the  story  of 
Noah  and  his  vineyard  (Gen.  ix.  20  ff.). 

37 


land.^  A  body  of  representative  men,  specially  selected 
— not  unlike  what  we  should  now  call  a  Royal  Commis- 
sion— was  charged  with  the  duty  of  dividing  the  land. 
It  consisted  of  one  representative  from  each  tribe  under 
the  presidency  of  Joshua  ben  Nun  and  Eleazar  the 
priest.^  To  secure  fairness  of  division  as  between  the 
tribes,  the  final  apportionment  was  to  be  by  lot.^  Every 
tribe,  and  every  family  in  each  tribe  (Levi  only  excepted), 
had  its  proportionate  share  of  the  common  heritage.  *To 
many  thou  shalt  give  the  more  inheritance,  and  to  few 
thou  shalt  give  the  less  inheritance ;  to  every  one  [of  the 
tribal  chiefs]  shall  his  inheritance  be  given  according  to 
those  that  were  numbered  of  him."^  Even  in  those  early 
times,  we  find,  in  connection  with  the  division  of  the 
land,  a  remarkable  recognition  of  women's  rights.^ 

The  records  of  the  actual  division  in  accordance  with 
these  "commandments  and  judgments  of  Moses"  are  to 
be  found  in  the  Book  of  Joshua.®  A  commission  of  sur- 
vey was  appointed  (three  men  from  each  tribe) ;  a  re- 
port was  drawn  up ;  and  "Eleazar  the  priest,  and  Joshua 
the  son  of  Nun,  and  the  heads  of  the  fathers  of  the 
tribes  of  the  children  of  Israel  divided  [the  land]  for 
an  inheritance  by  lot  in  Shiloh  before  the  Lord,  at  the. 
door  of  the  tabernacle  of  the  congregation.  So  they 
made  an  end  of  dividing  the  country.""^ 

§  7.  Josephus  tells  us  that  the  land  was  not  divided 
into  equal  areas,  but  according  to  its  value  for  agricultural 

1.  Num.  xxvi.  1-51. 

2.  Num.  xxxiv.  16-29. 

3.  Num.  xxvi.  55,  56.  Cp.  Ezek.  xlvii.  22,  23,  where  the  "stranger"  is 
to  have  his  share  in  the  land  equally  with  the  born  Israelite. 

4.  Num.  xxvi.  52-54,  xxxiii.  54.  Render  with  Prof.  Kennedy  (Century 
Bible,  ad  loc):  "For  the  (tribe  or  clan  that  is)  large,  thou  shalt  make  its 
inheritance  large,  and  for  that  which  is  small  thou  shalt  make  its  inheritance 
small;  according  to  its  census  return  shall  its  inheritance  be  given  to  each 
(tribe  or  clan)."  The  allotments  were  measured  by  a  (measuring)  "line" 
or  "cord"  (Mic.  ii.  5;  Amos  vii.  17). 

5.  On  the  ex  parte  application  of  the  daughters  of  Zelophehad  (Num. 
xxvi.  33,  xxvii.  1-11;  Josh.  xvii.  3,  4).  The  decision  was  reviewed  on  ap- 
peal, and  made  subject  to  a  proviso  for  the  protection  of  inter-tribal  rights 
(the  representatives  of  the  Manassite  clan  Machir,  appellants)  (Num.  xxxvi 
1-12). 

6.  Num.  xxxvi.  13;  Josh,  xiii.-xix. 

7.  Josh.  xix.  51;  Num.  xxxiv.  13,  16-29.     Cp.  Ezek.  xlviii.  1-7,  23-29. 


purposes;  though  whether  he  was  preserving  an  ancient 
tradition  or  merely  putting  a  probable  gloss  upon  the  ex- 
isting record  is  not  easy  to  determine.  However,  the 
passage  is  worth  transcribing — 

"So  [Joshua]  sent  men  to  measure  their  country,  and 
sent  with  them  some  geometricians,  who  could  not  easily  fail 
of  knowing  the  truth,  on  account  of  their  skill  in  that  art. 
He  also  gave  them  a  charge  to  estimate  the  measure  of  that 
part  of  the  land  that  was  most  fruitful,  and  what  was  not 
so  good;  for  such  is  the  nature  of  the  land  of  Canaan,  that 
one  may  see  large  plains,  and  such  as  are  exceeding  fit 
to  produce  fruit,  which  yet,  if  they  were  compared  to  other 
parts  of  the  country,  might  be  reckoned  exceeding  fruitful, 
yet  if  they  be  compared  with  the  fields  about  Jericho,  and  to 
those  that  belong  to  Jerusalem,  will  appear  to  be  of  no  ac- 
count at  all.  And  although  it  so  falls  out,  that  these  people 
have  but  a  very  little  of  this  sort  of  land,  and  that  it  is  for 
the  main  mountainous  also,  yet  does  it  not  come  behind  other 
parts,  on  account  of  its  exceeding  goodness  and  beauty :  for 
which  reason  Joshua  thought  the  land  for  the  tribes  should 
be  divided  by  estimation  of  its  goodness,  rather  than  the  large- 
ness of  its  measure,  it  often  happening  that  one  acre  of  some 
sort  of  land  was  equivalent  to  a  thousand  other  acres."^ 

§  8.  The  boundaries  of  the  family  allotments  were 
carefully  marked,  and  the  sanctity  of  these  ''landmarks"^ 
— the  outward  and  visible  signs  of  the  equal  right  to  the 
use  of  the  earth — was  protected  by  the  public  and  solemn 
denunciation  of  a  curse  against  him  who  should  dishon- 
estly tamper  with  them.  The  whole  Nation  was  conven- 
ed in  solemn  assembly  on  Mounts  Gerizim  and  Ebal. 
To  adopt  the  language  of  the  modern  newspaper,  the 
Levites  proposed  to  this  mass  meeting  a  series  of  resolu- 
tions, to  which  the  people  gave  their  unanimous  assent. 
Those  resolutions  classed  the  removal  of  the  landmark — 

1.  Josephus,  Antiq.  v.  i.  76-78. 

2.  "Landmark. — An  object  such  as  a  stone,  a  heap  of  stones,  or  a  tree 
with  a  mark  on  its  bark,  intended  t'o  mark  the  limit  of  a  field,  a  farm,  or 
the  property  of  an  individual-  In  Palestine,  these  landmarks  are  scrupulously 
respected;  and  in  passing  along  a  road  or  pathway  one  may  observe  from 
time  to  time  a  stone  placed  by  the  edge  of  the  field  from  which  a  shallow 
furrow  has  been  ploughed,  marking  the  limits  of  cultivation  of  neighbouring 
proprietors.  ...  In  Egypt,  the  land  had  to  be  remeasured  and^  alloted 
after  each  inundation  of  the  Nile,  and  boundary-stones  placed  at  the  junction 
of  two  properties.  A  collection  of  such  objects  is  to  be  seen  in  the  Assyrian 
Room,  British  Museum." — Prof.  Edwd.  Hull  in  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the 
Bible,  iii.  24. 

39 


the  infringement  of  the  equal  right  of  access  to  land — 
with  those  social  sins  which  bring  a  curse  upon  the  Na- 
tion; with  the  sins  which  break  up  families,  which  re- 
duce men  to  the  level  of  the  brute ;  with  idolatry,  adultery, 
and  incest;  with  the  perversion  of  justice,  and  treacher- 
ous murder,  and  the  crime  of  the  hired  assassin.^  For, 
to  the  Hebrew,  the  landmark  was  a  sacred  symbol.^  But 
it  was  not  the  symbol  of  private  ''property''  in  land. 

§  9.  The  story  of  Ahab  and  Naboth  illustrates,  in  a 
terribly  dramatic  way,  at  once  the  passionate  attach- 
ment of  the  Hebrew  to  the  "inheritance  of  his  fathers," 
and  the  iniquity  of  the  attempt  to  dispossess  him  of  it, 
even  by  so  mild  a  method  as  expropriation  with  compen- 
sation.^ M.  Renan  has,  indeed,  attempted  to  whitewash 
Ahab,  whom  he  regarded  as  a  wise  and  progressive  mon- 
arch, thwarted  in  a  scheme  of  public  improvement  by 
the  obstinate  perversity  of  those  clerical  anarchists,  the 
prophets,  and  grossly  libelled  by  the  Tory  High-Church- 
man who  wrote  that  part  of  the  Book  of  the  Kings! 
The  argument  is  original  and  amusing — but  hardly  con- 
vincing.* 

1.  Deut.  xxvii.  11-26,  xix.  14  ("remove"  =  Hebr.  "set  back");  Josh, 
viii.  33;  Job  xxiv.  2;  Prov.  xxii.  28,  xxiii.  10;  Isa.  v.  8;  Hos.  v.  10;  Mic.  ii.  2. 
"The  Hebr.  word  in  Deut.  xix.  14,  and  elsewhere,  is  gebUl,  lit.  'border*  or 
'boundary.*  Instead,  therefore,  of  'Thou  shalt  not  remove  the  landmark,* 
etc.,  we  should  translate,  'Thou  shalt  not  move  the  boundary  of  thy  neigh- 
bour fixed  by  the  ancients,'  i.  e.  in  order  to  add  to  thy  portion  what  properly 
belongs  to  thy  neighbour.  In  arable  land,  which  is  mainly  important,  the  usual 
boundary  line  is  a  furrow  of  double  width,  with  a  stone  set  up  at  either  end" 
(Temple  Diet,  of  the  Bible,  p.  276). 

2.  The  Oxford  Bible  gives  a  picture  (Plate  L)  of  a  Babylonian  land- 
mark (Brit.  Mus.  No.  106).  The  figures  upon  the  upper  part  of  the  stone  are 
supposed  to  represent  certain  gods  and  signs  of  the  zodiac.  The  inscription 
upon  the  reverse  gives  the  details  of  the  situation  and  price  of  the  land  and 
the  name  of  the  land-surveyor.  It  closes  with  a  series  of  curses  upon  any 
official  or  other  person  who  shall  remove  this  "everlasting  landmark,"  or  at- 
tempt to  interfere  with  the  boundaries  of  the  land  described  upon  it.  The 
gods  are  entreated  to  destroy  any  such  offender  and  his  children  for  ever  and 
ever.  (See  also  Oxford  Helps  to  the  Study  of  the  Bible,  p.  [77]  and 
Plate  cxi.). — Numa  ordered  the  Romans  to  mark  the  boundaries  of  their 
lands  by  stones,  which  were  consecrated  to  the  God  Terminus.  At  these 
stones  yearly  sacrifices  were  to  be  offered.  So,  Jacob  offered  sacrifices  at  the 
heap  of  stones  marking  the  boundary  between  himself  and  Laban  (Gen.  xxxi. 
43-55) ;  perhaps  a  tradition  of  an  ancient  delimitation  of  frontier  between 
Israel  and  Syria. — The  Dean  of  Durham  writes  to  the  author:  "The  'land- 
mark' hereabouts  used  to  be  a  rude  cross  set  up  between  one  property  and  an- 
other. We  have  an  example  of  one  of  these  in  our  Library  Collection  of  an- 
cient stones.  It  used  to  mark  off  the  Prior's  fields  from  those  of  the  Bursar. 
It  signified  the  ownership  of  God  over  all  men's  possessions  in  land." 

3.  1  Kings  xxi. ;  2  Kings  ix.  10,  25,  26. 

4.  Renan,  Histoirc  du  peuple  d'  Israel  (1889),  ii.  293. 

40 


§  10.  We  get  another  vivid  glimpse  of  an  episode  in 
the  agelong  struggle  for  the  rights  of  man  against  the 
encroachments  of  monopoly  in  the  dramatic  scene  which 
Micah  describes,  and  in  which  he  himself  plays  the  lead- 
ing part.  Like  his  contemporary,  the  courtier  and  poli- 
tician Isaiah,  this  peasant  leader  from  a  southern  village 
denounced  the  land-grabbers  to  their  faces — 

**Woe  to  them  that  devise  iniquity  and  work  evil  upon 
their  beds !  When  the  morning  is  light,  they  practise  it,  be- 
cause it  is  in  the  power  of  their  hand.  And  they  covet 
fields,  and  seize  them;  and  houses,  and  take  them  away;  and 
they  oppress  a  man  and  his  house,  even  a  man  and  his  heritage. 

"Therefore,  thus  saith  the  Lord :  Behold,  against  this  fam- 
ily do  I  devise  an  evil  [viz.  the  yoke  of  captivity]  from  which 
ye  shall  not  remove  your  necks,  neither  shall  ye  walk  haughti- 
ly: for  it  as  an  evil  time.  In  that  day  shall  theyi  take  up  a 
parable  against  you,  and  lament  with  the  lamentation,  'It  is 
done'  [R.V.m.],  and  say,  'We  be  utterly  spoiled;  He  changeth 
the  portion  of  my  people;  how  doth  He  remove  it  from  me? 
to  the  rebellious  [heathen]  He  divideth  our  fields.'  There- 
fore thou  shalt  have  none  that  shall  cast  the  line  by  lot  in 
the  congregation  of  the  Lord." 

That  is,  captivity  is  to  be  the  punishment  of  the  land 
monopolists.  They  shall  no  more  have  a  share  in  the  land 
which  the  Lord  their  God  had  given  them,  because  they 
have  violated  the  law  of  equal  rights.  But  the  land- 
grabbers  protest,  indignantly,  and  with  a  touch  of  sanc- 
timoniousness— 

"Prophesy  ye  not.  .  .  .  They  shall  not  prophesy  of  these 
things  [R.V.m.] ;  their  reproaches  never  cease.  Shall  it  be 
said,  O  house  of  Jacob,  Ts  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  straitened?' 
Are  these  His  doings?" 

But  the  prophet  will  have  no  such  conception  of  an  easy- 
going God  who  overlooks  crimes  against  justice,  and  in 
His  name  he  replies — 

"Do  not  My  words  do  good  to  him  that  walketh  uprightly? 
But  yesterday  [R.V.m.]  My  people  is  risen  up  as  an  enemy: 
ye  strip  the  robe  [outer  robe='overcoat']  from  off  the  garment 
from  them  that  pass  by  securely  as  men  averse  from  war. 

1.  "They"  is  indefinite  [A.  V.,  "one"],  and  means  the  professional 
mourners  hired  for  funerals  in  the  East. 

41 


The  women  of  My  people  ye  cast  out  from  their  pleasant 
houses;  from  their  young  children  ye  take  away  My  glory^ 
for  ever.  Arise  ye,  and  depart;  for  this  [land]  is  not  your 
rest:  because  of  uncleanness,  ye  shall  be  destroyed  [LXX] 
with  a  grievous  destruction.  .  .  .  Hear,  I  pray  you,  ye  heads 
of  Jacob,  and  rulers  of  the  house  of  Israel;  is  it  not  for  you 
to  know  judgment?  who  hate  the  good,  and  love  the  evil; 
who  [like  faithless  shepherds  devouring  the  sheep]  pluck  off 
their  skin  from  off  them,  and  their  flesh  from  off  their 
bones;  who  also  eat  the  flesh  of  My  people;  and  they  flay 
their  skin  from  off  them,  and  break  their  bones :  yea,  they 
chop  them  in  pieces,  as  for  the  pot,  and  as  flesh  within  the 
caldron.  .  .  .  Hear  this,  I  pray  you,  ye  heads  of  the  house 
of  Jacob,  and  rulers  of  the  house  of  Israel,  that  abhor  judg- 
ment, and  pervert  all  equity.  They  build  up  Zion  with  blood, 
and  Jesusalem  with  iniquity.  .  .  .  Therefore  shall  Zion  for 
your  sake  be  plowed  as  a  field,  and  Jerusalem  shall  become 
heaps,  and  the  mountain  of  the  House^  as  the  high  places 
of  a  forest."^ 

§  11.  '^Selfishness,"  says  a  modern  writer/  referring 
to  a  similar  but  shorter  passage  in  Isa.  v.  8-10,  "is  the 
great  sin  in  all  ages  and  peoples.  As  soon  as  national 
institutions  have  awakened  the  sense  of  personality  and 
the  feeling  of  self-respect,  the  desire  of  accumulating 
wealth  grows  with  them.  And  in  no  form  is  it  more  lia- 
ble to  abuse  than  in  connection  with  the  possession  of 
land.  Men  desire,  by  an  almost  universal  instinct,  to  pos- 
sess property  in  land.  .  .  .  Yet,  since  the  land  cannot  be 
increased  in  quantity,  its  possession  by  one  man  is  the 
exclusion  of  another,  and  the  Hebrew  laws  endeavour 
to  meet  this  difficulty  by  special  provisions,  the  breach 
or  evasion  of  which  the  prophet  now  denounces  in  his 
first  'woe'  on  the  selfish  landowner.  He  who  can  join 
house  to  house,  and  lay  field  to  field,  when  he  knows, 
and  long  has  known,  face  to  face,  the  very  man, 
wife  and  child  whom  he  has  dispossessed,  and  can  drive 
out  by  his  own  simple  act  his  fellow-men  to  be  desolate 


1.  Viz.  the  privilege  of  belonging  to  the  congregation  of  the  Lord,  which 
is  lost  when  the  children  are  sold  into  a  heathen  land  [Century  Bible,  n. 
ad  loc.].  These  men  rob  their  fellow-citizens  of  their  rights  in  the  land, 
evict  women  from  their  homes,  sell  children  into  slavery,  and  strip  the  very 
clothes  off  their  backs. 

2.  t.  e.  the  mountain  on  which  the  Temple  stood,  as  is  clear  from  iv.   1. 

3.  Mic.  ii.,  iii.  [R.  V.]. 

4.  Sir  Edward  Strachey,  Bart.,  Jewish  History  and  Politics,  p.  64. 

42 


in  their  poverty,  in  order  that  he  may  be  alone  in  his 
riches,  may  expect  a  punishment  proportioned  to  his 
crime.  Such  men  were  the  nobles  of  Judah  and  Israel 
throughout  the  land ;  and  the  prophet  heard,  ringing  in  his 
ears,  the  declaration  of  Jehovah,  the  King  of  the  land, 
that  the  great  and  fair  palaces  should  become  as  desolate 
as  the  peasants'  and  yeomen's  cottages  which  had  made 
place  for  them: — the  vineyard  of  ten  acres  shall  yield 
but  eight  gallons  of  wine,  and  the  cornfield  shall  give 
back  but  a  tenth  part  of  the  seed  sown  in  it." 

Eighteen  centuries  earlier  than  Sir  E.  Strachey,  anoth- 
er writer,  a  Jew,  paraphrasing  and  annotating  the  Law 
of  his  Nation  for  the  benefit  of  the  Greeks,  had  thus 
summed  up  the  matter — 

"Let  it  not  be  esteemed  lawful  to  remove  boundaries,  neith- 
er our  own,  nor  of  those  with  whom  we  are  at  peace.  Have 
a  care  you  do  not  take  those  landmarks  away,  which  are, 
as  it  were,  a  divine  and  unshaken  limitation  of  rights  made 
by  God  Himself,  to  last  for  ever,  since  this  going  beyond 
limits,  and  gaining  ground  upon  others,  is  the  occasion  of 
wars  and  seditions ;  for  those  that  remove  boundaries  are  not 
far  off  an  attempt  to  subvert  the  laws."i 

§  12.  It  is  plain  that  the  method  adopted  in  the  Com- 
monwealth of  Israel  for  the  practical  assertion  of  the 
equal  right  to  the  use  of  the  earth,  however  good  for  the 
time  and  place,  could  not  possibly  be  followed  in  a  modern 
State,  with  its  complicated  social  organisation  and  its 
varied  agricultural,  mining,  manufacturing  and  trading 
interests.  But  ^'God  fulfils  Himself  in  many  ways,"  and 
it  is  quite  possible  to  hold  that  the  Mosaic  Land  Laws 
were  absolutely  right  in  principle,  and  also  right  in  meth- 
od for  their  own  time,  without  holding  it  either  necessary 
or  desirable  to  graft  the  details  of  early  Hebrew  legisla- 
tion on  a  later  and  alien  Western  civilisation.  Just  as 
we  have  long  learnt  to  worship  God  without  filling  our 
churches  with  the  reek  of  burning  bullocks,  so,  in  these 
latter  days,  we  are  learning  how  to  make  equal  rights  in 
land  a  reality  without  an  equal  division  of  the  land  itself. 
Although  such  a  division  is  one  of  the  possible  ways  of 


1.     Joscphus,  Antiq.  iv.   8.  226. 

43 


asserting  the  doctrine  of  equal  rights,  it  ceases  to  be  a 
convenient  or  even  a  just  way  as  soon  as  civiHsation  pass- 
es beyond  the  pastoral  and  agricultural  stage.  As  we 
shall  see  later,  the  special  position  of  the  tribe  of  Levi 
in  the  Hebrew  State  led  to  the  introduction,  in  their 
case,  of  a  modification  which  directly  suggests  the  method 
of  modern  Land  Reform.^  Fortunately  it  is  not  even 
difficult  to  assert  an  equal  and  common  right  without 
physical  division.  If  a  father  gives  his  children  a  cake, 
they  naturally  assert  their  equal  rights  by  cutting  it  up 
into  equal  shares.  But  if  he  gives  them  a  pony,  they 
divide,  not  the  pony,  but  the  use  of  it.  If  he  leaves  them 
a  house  in  equal  shares,  they  may  either  share  the  occu- 
pancy of  the  house  equally,  or  occupy  the  house  unequal- 
ly, according  to  the  need  of  each  for  house-room,  paying 
the  rental  into  a  common  fund,  from  which  each  draws 
an  equal  share ;  or  they  may  let  the  whole  house  to  some 
one  else  and  equally  divide  the  rent.  A  proposal  to 
divide  a  railway — permanent  way,  buildings  and  rolling- 
stock — among  the  shareholders  would  meet  with  scanty 
favour  at  a  shareholders'  meeting:  they  know  well  that 
they  divide  the  railway  best  by  dividing  its  earnings  in  the 
form  of  dividend.  So  with  the  land.  It  is  still  true  that 
all  men  have  equal  rights  in  land;  it  is  the  joint-stock 
property  of  the  whole  people ;  every  citizen  has  one  share 
in  it.  It  is  no  longer  true  that  all  men  require  to  use 
land  in  equal  portions,  any  more  than  that  every  railway- 
shareholder  travels  an  equal  number  of  train-miles.  It 
is  not  true  that  equal  portions  of  land,  even  if  the  land 
were  so  divided,  are  even  approximately  of  equal  value. 
Today  when  we  measure  land  rather  by  value  than  by 
area,  and  when  only  a  comparatively  small  percentage 
of  the  people  is  directly  engaged  in  tilling  the  soil,  the 
natural  and  easy  and  inevitable  way  of  asserting  our 
equal  rights  in  the  common  heritage  is  to  divide  the  value 
of  the  land  (i.e.  "economic  rent"),  by  having  it  paid  into 
a  common  fund,  and  by  applying  it  to  the  common  uses 
in  which  all  can  share.  "The  profit  of  the  earth  is  for 
all,"  and  it  expresses  itself  in  land  value.     Sutherland 

1.     See  Chapter  VI.,  §  3,  below. 

44 


clearances  and  Glenbeigh  evictions  are  modern  survivals 
of  the  primitive,  brutal  methods  of  a  landmark  remover 
who  does  his  business  inartistically.  These  methods  have 
become  unpopular,  because  they  allow  the  character  and 
the  results  of  the  transaction  to  be  seen  in  all  their  na- 
tive horror,  and  because  they  have  the  damning  defect  of 
being  not  only  brutal,  but  —  unnecessary.  The  exact 
modern  equivalent  of  the  sin  of  "setting-back''  one's 
neighbours'  landmarks  is  a  more  subtle  and  therefore  a 
more  dangerous,  because  a  less  disgusting,  thing.  It  is 
the  private  appropriation  of  the  land  value  which  the 
community  creates.  It  is  a  sin  which  brings  a  brood  of 
curses,  both  upon  him  who  gains,  and  upon  those  who 
lose.  It  is  a  sin  of  which  all  of  us,  and  not  merely  the 
landlords,  need  to  be  called  upon  to  repent.  For  in  a 
democratically  governed  country,  with  a  wide  (though 
not  yet  nearly  wide  enough)  franchise,  when  wrong  is 
done  by  law,  the  people  who  made  the  law,  or  who,  hav- 
ing the  pow^er,  neglect  to  repeal  it,  are  as  much  respon- 
sible for  the  wrong  done,  as  are  those  who  profit  by  the 
law  while  it  stands. 

A  large  and  increasing  body  of  students  of  social  ques- 
tions are  urging  that  the  true  key  to  Social  Reform,  the 
surest  and  safest  foundation  for  Social  Justice,  lies  in 
the  application  of  the  principles  of  the  Old  Testament  to 
the  modern  Land  Question,  by  the  method  advocated  by 
Henry  George;  and  that,  under  modern  conditions,  the 
first  step  towards  reasserting  the  ancient  and  eternal 
truths  which  informed  the  Mosaic  Land  Laws  must  be 
the  Taxation  of  Land  Values. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  YEAR  OF  JUBILEE:  LAND  AND 
LIBERTY 

"And  they  praised  the  God  of  their  fathers,  because  He  had 
given  them  freedom  and  Hberty/' — 1  Esd.  iv.  62. 

"Where  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  liberty."— 2  Cor. 
iii.  17. 

"Ye  shall  .  .  .  proclaim  liberty  throughout  all  the  land  unto 
all  the  inhabitants  thereof." — Lev.  xxv.  10. 

§  1.  The  equal  division  of  the  land  gave  to  every 
family  in  the  Commonwealth  of  Israel  direct  access  to 
the  soil.  There  was  little  room  for  the  growth  of  in- 
voluntary poverty  in  a  community  whose  Law  did  not 
permit  the  divorce  of  land  from  labour.  ''He  that  tilleth 
his  land  shall  have  plenty  of  bread/'  "shall  be  satisfied 
with  bread."^  It  is  very  significant  that  while  Moses  (no 
doubt  ''for  the  hardness  of  their  hearts,"  Mark  x.5)  did 
permit  to  the  Hebrews  a  certain  form  of  chattel-slavery — 
then  probably  universal  among  Eastern  nations — though 
hedging  it  about  with  unusually  stringent  limitations,^ 
yet  he  prohibited  absolutely  that  more  insidious  form  of 
slavery,  landlordism,  which  reduces  men  to  subjection 
by  monopolising  the  natural  elements  necessary  to  their 
existence.    "The  bread  of  the  needy  is  their  life :  he  that 

1.  Prov.  xii.  11,  xxviii.  19. 

2.  Note,  in  addition  to  what  is  given  below,  the  effort  to  protect  slaves 
against  injury  by  their  masters  (Ex.  xxi.  20,  26,  27;  op.  Lev.  xxiv.  17-22), 
and  the  attempts  to  mitigate  the  position  of  the  woman  slave  fEx.  xxi.  7-11; 
Deut.  xxi.  10-14).  Asylum  for  escaped  slaves  (Deut.  xxiii.  15,  16).  "Ser- 
vant" in  the  English  versions=**bondman"  (R.  V.  m.  Ex.  xxi.  2,  etc.),  or 
"slave."  "The  Deuteronomic  law  in  favour  of  the  fugitive  slave  is  in  marked 
contrast  with  the  severe  enactments  in  the  Code  of  Hammurabi"  (S.  A.  Cook, 
The  Laws  of  Moses  and  the  Code  of  Hammurabi,  p.  274). 

46 


def  raudeth  him  thereof  is  a  man  of  blood.  He  that  taketh 
away  his  neighbour's  Hving  slayeth  him;  and  he  that  de- 
fraudeth  the  labourer  of  his  hire  is  a  blood-shedder/'^ 

§  2.  So  far,  then,  as  the  first  settlers  in  the  land  of 
Canaan  were  concerned,  they  all  had  a  fair  start.  Wage 
slavery  and  undeserved  poverty  were  unknown.  The 
legislator  was  able  to  contemplate  the  possibility  of  an 
ideal  state  of  society  ''when  there  shall  be  no  poor  among 
you ;  for  the  Lord  shall  greatly  bless  thee  in  the  land  which 
the  Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee  for  an  inheritance  to  pos- 
sess it'';  but  ''only  if  thou  carefully  hearken  unto  the 
voice  of  the  Lord  thy  God,  to  observe  to  do  all  these 
commandments  which  I  command  thee  this  day."^  So 
long  as  the  Law  was  kept,  no  Hebrew  need  toil  for 
sweated  wages^  for  a  brother  Hebrew.  By  his  own  labour, 
under  the  Law  which  secured  to  him  the  equal  right  to 
the  use  of  the  earth,  he  could  produce  all  that  he  needed, 
without  being  beholden  to  or  controlled  by  any  one  else. 
Under  such  a  Law,  the  worker's  wages  consisted  of  the 
whole  of  his  product.  He  was  not  compelled  to  share 
what  he  produced  either  with  a  landlord  or  with  an  ex- 
ploiter of  labour.  ''Whoso  keepeth  the  fig  tree  shall  eat 
the  fruit  thereof."^  "They  shall  build  houses  and  in- 
habit them;  and  they  shall  plant  vineyards,  and  eat  the 
fruit  of  them.  They  shall  not  build,  and  another  in- 
habit; they  shall  not  plant,  and  another  eat;  for  as  the 
days  of  a  tree  are  the  days  of  My  people,  and  Mine  elect 
shall  long  enjoy  the  work  of  their  hands.  They  shall 
not  labour  in  vain,  nor  bring  forth  for  trouble."^     "The 

1.  Ecclus.  xxxiv.  21,  22,  curiously  echoed  by  Shakespeare  (Merch.  of 
Ven.,  Act  iv.  sc.  1):  "You  take  my  life  when  you  do  take  the  means 
whereby  I  live."  Cp.  Deut.  xxiv.  6:  "No  man  shall  take  the  nether  or  the 
upper  millstone  to  pledge:  for  he  taketh  a  man's  life  to  pledge." 

2.  Deut.  XV.  4,  5. 

3.  **The  Lord  will  enter  into  judgment  with  the  ancients  of  His  people, 
and  the  princes  thereof:  for  ye  have  eaten  up  the  vineyard;  the  spoil  of  the 
poor  is  in  your  houses.  What  mean  ye  that  ye  beat  My  people  to  pieces,  and 
grind  the  faces  of  the  poor,  saith  the  Lord  of  Host's?"  (Isa.  iii.  14,  15). 

4.  Prov.  xxvii.   18. 

5.  Isa.  Ixv.  21-23;  cp.  Amos  v.  11:  "Forasmuch  therefore  as  ye  trample 
upon  the  poor,  and  take  exactions  from  him  of  wheat:  ye  have  built  houses 
of  hewn  stone,  but  ye  shall  not  dwell  in  them;  ye  have  planted  pleasant  vine- 
yards, but  ye  shall  not  drink  the  wine  thereof"  [R.  V.],  and  also,  in  the 
same  sense,  Lev.  xxvi.  15,  16;  Deut.  xxviii.  30,  38-41;  Mic.  vi.  10-15;  Zeph. 
i.   13. 

47 


husbandman  that  laboureth  must  be  the  first  to  partake 
of  the  fruits."^  ''Who  planteth  a  vineyard,  and  eateth 
not  of  the  fruit  thereof  ?  or  who  feedeth  a  flock,  and  eat- 
eth not  of  the  milk  of  the  flock?  .  .  .  For  it  is  written 
in  the  Law  of  Moses,  Thou  shalt  not  muzzle  the  mouth 
of  the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn.  Doth  God  take 
care  for  oxen  ?  Or  saith  He  it  altogether  for  our  sakes  ? 
For  our  sakes,  no  doubt,  this  is  written:  that  he  that 
ploweth  should  plow  in  hope;  and  that  he  that  thresheth 
in  hope  should  be  partaker  of  his  hope."^ 

§  3.  But  it  is  written  that  ''God  made  man  upright; 
but  they  have  sought  out  many  inventions."^  There 
was  a  good  deal  of  human  nature  about  the  descendants 
of  the  crafty  Jacob.  They  were  subject  to  at  least  their 
share  of  human  weaknesses  and  imperfections,  and  were, 
moreover,  liable,  like  other  folk,  to  accident  and  mis- 
fortune. It  was  necessary  that  the  Law  should  take  this 
into  account,  and  provide,  not  only  for  a  fair  start  in  the 
first  instance,  but  also  for  a  continuance  of  fair  condi- 
tions. Each  succeeding  generation  had  the  same  equal 
right  to  the  use  of  the  earth.  So  abhorrent  to  the  Mosaic 
conception  of  justice  was  the  idea  of  a  landless  pro- 
letariat, that  special  provision  was  made  to  secure,  once 
in  each  generation,  a  restoration  of  the  original  right  of 
equal  access  to  the  natural  opportunities  of  labour.  Hence 
the  institution  of  the  Year  of  Jubilee. 

In  spite  of  many  learned  disquisitions  and  much  acute 
speculation,  the  derivation  of  the  word  "Jubilee"  remains 
among  the  unsettled  questions  of  Hebrew  philology. 
Happily,  the  nature  and  significance  of  the  institution 
itself  is  not  open  to  doubt.  No  two  things  bearing  the 
same  name  could  well  differ  more  completely  than  the 
Jubilee  of  the  Hebrew  Commonwealth  and  the  Victoria 
celebrations  in  connection  with  which  its  name  was  taken 
in  vain.    Jubilcctis  est  ad  imiversam  civitatem  restauran- 

1.  2  Tim.  ii.  6  [R.  V.]. 

2.  1  Cor.  ix.  7-10;  Deut.  xxv.  4;  1  Tim.  v.  18. 

3.  Eccles.  vii.  29. 

48 


dam}  It  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  reign  of 
a  monarch.  One  of  the  greatest  Hebrew  statesmen  sol- 
emnly warned  his  nation  against  the  evils  of  monarchy, 
and  showed  them  how  inevitably  great  social  and  political 
evils — the  rise  of  a  privileged  class,  the  growth  of  a  land- 
ed aristocracy,  the  subjection  of  the  common  people,  the 
manufacture  of  flunkeys,  the  taxation  of  food,  the  crea- 
tion of  a  standing  army^ — would  follow  upon  such  an  act 
of  treason  to  the  unseen  King^  as  the  establishment  of  a 
dynasty. 

§  4.  In  our  ''Diamond  Jubilee''  procession,  on  22nd 
June  1897,  the  visible  embodiments  of  Samuel's  forecast 
were  paraded  before  the  eyes  of  an  admiring  pubHc;  a 
procession  of  rent-eaters  and  tax-eaters,  titled  and  other, 
along  a  lane  of  forty  thousand  fighting  men.  The  then 
Prince  of  Wales  fathered  a  ''Jubilee"  fund  for  post- 
poning the  public  support  and  control  of  the  public  hos- 
pitals. His  gracious  consort  started  another  fund  for 
giving  one  square  meal  for  once  in  a  while  to  some  of 
the  beggars  and  outcasts  who  people  the  slums.  But  a 
real  Jubilee  on  Old  Testament  lines  would,  if  carried  into 
practice  in  Bible-reading  England,  render  five-sixths  of 
the  hospitals  unnecessary^  by  remedying  the  social  injus- 
tices which  breed  avoidable  sickness  and  cause  premature 
death;  and,  by  establishing  equity  as  the  basis  of  social 
relations,  would  abolish  the  slums,  and  impose  starvation 
as  a  penalty  only  upon  wilful  and  obstinate  idlers.^  To 
the  Hebrews,  the  Jubilee  meant  a  year's  holiday.^  The 
Victorian  equivalent  for  this  was  a  day's  holiday  by 
Royal  proclamation — a  holiday  for  which  many  w^orkmen 

1.  Thus  tersely  Ewald,  De  feriarum  Hcbr.  origine  acg  ratione  (1841), 
p.  25.  In  his  later  Alterthumer  Volkes  Israels  he  has  discussed  the  subject 
fully. 

2.  1  Sam.  viii.  11-18;  cp.  xiii.  1,  2,  xiv,  52;  1  Kings  iv.  7,  xviii.  5; 
"the  king's  mowings"  (Amos  vii.  1) ;  the  building  of  Jehoiakim's  palace  by 
forced,  unpaid  labour  (Jer.  xxii.  13-19);  Ezek.  xlvi.  18;  Deut.  xvii.  14-20. 

3.  1  Sam.  x.  19,  xii.  12,  19;  Isa.  xli.  21;  Hos.  viii.  4  and  xiii.  10,  11. 
There  is  an  early  tradition  that  Gideon,  the  "Judge"  or  Deliverer,  refused 
an  offer  of  hereditary  kingship.     Note  his  reason  as  given  in  Judg.  viii.  23. 

4.  St.  Paul  chides  the  Corinthian  Christians  for  profaning  the  Sacra- 
ment of  Brotherhood.  "For  this  cause,"  he  says,  "many  are  weak  and  sickly 
among  you,  and  many  sleep"  (1  Cor.  xi.  30). 

5.  2  Thess.  iii.  10. 

6.  ».  e.  from  their  usual  agricultural  work    (Lev.  xxv.   11,   12). 

49 


had  to  pay  by  the  loss  of  a  day's  wages — and  even  this 
(so  incurably  are  we  given  over  to  the  worship  of  Mam- 
mon) was  announced,  not  as  a  national  holiday,  or  as  a 
religious  holy-day,  but  as  a  "Bank"  holiday.  This  was 
entirely  worthy  of  a  nation  of  shopkeepers,  who  exploited 
even  a  revel  of  ''loyalty''  in  the  interests  of  Diamond  Jub- 
ilee Syndicates,  gathering  unearned  increment  along  the 
line  of  route  at  an  "expected,"  but  not  always  realised, 
"profit"  to  the  shareholders  of  thousands  per  cent. 

In  England,  with  its  immense  wealth  and  its  chronic 
poverty,  with  its  Empire  upon  w^hich  the  sun  never  sets 
and  its  slums  where  the  sun  never  rises,  there  is  nothing 
more  greatly  to  be  desired  than  a  real  Jubilee.  Once  in 
every  generation  the  Hebrew  people  were  called  to  a  Na- 
tional rejoicing:  not  because  the  courtiers'  prayer,  "O 
King,  live  for  ever!"  had  sounded  in  royal  ears  for  half 
a  century,  but  because  the  reign  of  social  justice  was  being 
reestablished ;  because  the  erstwhile  disinherited  w^as  once 
more  a  free  man  and  a  citizen.  If  the  principles  of  the 
Hebrew  land  laws  were  applied  under  our  constitutional 
monarchy,  we  could  with  the  greater  heartiness  *'sing  with 
heart  and  voice,  God  save  the  King,"  because  we  should 
no  longer  fear  that  a  crowd  of  hungry  men  might  send 
back,  as  a  sort  of  dismal  echo,  the  dreary  chorus,  "We've 
got  no  work  to  do." 

§  5.  For  once  in  every  fifty  years^ — which  we  may 
take  roughly  to  represent  a  generation  of  Hebrew  life — 
the  original  equal  division  of  the  land  was  restored. 
Whatever  inequalities  might  have  crept  in,  through  the 
foolishness  or  improvidence  of  some,  or  through  the 
selfishness  or  injustice  of  others,  wxre  redressed  when, 
in  the  fiftieth  year,  "on  the  tenth  day  of  the  seventh 
month,  in  the  day  of  atonement,"  the  trumpet  of  the 
Jubilee  sounded  throughout  all  the  land  and  proclaimed 

1.  The  Book  of  Jubilees  (second  century  B.  C.)  makes  the  Jubilee  cycle 
one  of  forty-nme  years.  But  according  to  Jos.  (Antiq.  iii.  12.  282),  and 
most  other  authorities,  it  was  the  fiftieth  year.  Ewald  (Antiq.,  Engl,  transl. 
of  8rd  ed.,  pp.  374,  375)  says  that  it  included  the  last  half  of  the  49th  and 
the  first  half  of  the  50th  year;  and  that  it  "naturally  began  with  the  pre- 
paratory day  of  the  Autumn  festival,  after  the  year's  harvest  of  every  kind 
was  complete." 

50 


the  national  festival  of  Land  and  Liberty.  "And  ye  shall 
hallow  the  fiftieth  year,  and  proclaim  liberty  throughout 
all  the  land  unto  all  the  inhabitants  thereof;  it  shall  be 
a  jubilee  to  you;  and  ye  shall  return  every  man  unto  his 
possession,  and  ye  shall  return  every  man  unto  his  fam- 
ily.'i 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  Hebrew's  estate  in  land  is 
always  spoken  of  as  his  "possession"  or  his  "inheritance," 
and  never  as  his  "ownership"  or  "property."  Ewald^ 
seems  to  have  expressed  the  distinction  with  exactness : — 

"The  existence  of  property  is  assumed  by  every  system  of 
legislation,  even  the  earliest,  because  such  a  system  can  only 
follow  on  a  long  period  of  social  development  and  exertion. 
But  Jahveism  assumes  more  than  this.  For,  according  to  it, 
each  of  the  tribes  of  Israel  is  to  have  its  landed  possessions, 
and  each  individual  household  in  the  tribe  is  to  have  its 
definite  portion  of  the  land  belonging  to  the  tribe,  which  is 
for  ever  to  remain  the  inalienable  heritage  of  this  house  and 
form  the  sure  basis  of  all  property"^ 

The  Hebrew  did  not  own  land.  It  was  not  "his  own" 
to  do  as  he  liked  with;  "the  land  shall  not  be  sold  out 
and  out";  it  was  only  his  to  use,  subject  to  the  equal 
rights  of  every  other  Hebrew.     He  only  enjoyed  an  in- 

1.  Lev.  XXV.  8-10.  There  is  no  definite  historical  record  of  the  actual 
observance  of  the  Year  of  Jubilee.  (But  see  Jewish  Encyclopedia,  x.  607, 
for  the  tradition  of  its  observance  before  the  capitivity.)  "On  a  close  in- 
spection nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  the  idea  of  the  Jubilee  is  the  last 
ring  of  a  chain  which  only  attains  in  it  the  necessary  conclusion,  and  that  the 
history  of  the  Jubilee,  in  spite  of  its  at  first  seemingly  strange  aspect,  was 
once  for  certuries  a  reality  in  the  national  life  of  Israel"  Ewald,  Antiq.  378). 
"It  is  impossible  to  think  that  (as  has  sometimes  been  supposed)  the  institu- 
tion of  the  jubilee  is  a  mere  paper-law — a  theoretical  completion  of  the  system 
of  seven;  at  least  as  far  as  concerns  the  land  (for  the  periodical  redistribu- 
tion of  which  there  are  analogies  in  other  nations)  it  must  date  from  ancient 
times  in  Israel  (Driver,  Literature  of  the  O.  T.,  7th  ed.,  p.  57).  Ezekiel  (vii. 
12,  13)  mentions  its  non-observance  as  one  of  the  signs  that  "the  end  is  come" 
upon  the  nation  for  its  abominable  misdoings  (vii.  2,  3). 

2.  Antiq.  Isr.  (Engl,  transl.  of  3rd  ed.),  p.  177. 

3.  Bishop  Westcott  has  an  interesting  note  (at  Heb.  vi.  12)  on  the  Bibli- 
cal use  of  KKrjpovo^iia  (rr:inheritance).  He  says,  "The  idea  of  inheritance 
which  [the  Gr.  words  used  in  the  LXX]  convey  is  in  some  important  respects 
different  from  that  which  we  associate  with  the  word.  .  .  .  The  dominant 
Biblical  sense  of  'inheritance'  is  the  enjoyment  by  a  rightful  title  of  that 
which  is  not  the  fruit  of  personal  exertion  .  .  .  there  is  no  necessary 
thought  of  succession  to  one  who  has  passed  away"  (Bishop  Westcott  on 
Hebrews,  2nd  edit.,  pp.  167-169).  The  words  which  1  have  italicised  show 
how  aptly  the  word  "inheritance"  is  used  of  land  as  distinguished  from  the 
results  of  labour. 

51 


terest  in  land,  and,  if  he  sold  anything,  he  could  only 
sell  that  interest.^  He  could  not  sell  the  equal  interest  of 
his  children  or  his  children's  children.^  The  land  of 
Canaan  was,  as  it  were,  held  from  God  on  lease,  by  the 
families  of  Israel.  At  the  end  of  every  fifty  years,  all 
the  leases  fell  in  simultaneously,  and  God  made  a  fresh 
grant  of  the  land,  for  another  fifty  years,  to  all  the  fam- 
ilies of  His  people,  in  equal  shares  as  at  the  first.  Hence 
the  Hebrew  who,  voluntarily  or  through  some  compulsion, 
"sold  his  land,"  sold,  not  the  ownership  of  the  land,  but 
the  ''fag-end  of  the  lease" — till  the  next  year  of  Jubilee.^ 
When  the  Jubilee  proclamation  again  sounded  from  the 
sacred  rams'  horns,  the  land  came  back  to  his  family, 
all  contracts  of  sale  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  and 
his  children  enjoyed  the  same  advantage  of  a  "fair  start" 
as  their  father  had  had  before  them. 

§  6.  It  is  plain  that,  under  such  a  Law,  the  growth  of 
a  wealthy  landlord  class  with  large  estates  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  a  landless^  pauper  class  on  the  other,  were 

1.  It  is  a  maxim  of  English  law  that  no  one  can  give  a  better  title  than 
he  has.  Nemo  dat  quod  non  habet.  See  Broom's  Legal  Maxims,  6th  edit., 
761.  Nemo  potest  plus  juris  ad  alium  transferre  quam  ipse  habet.  Coke's 
Littleton^  809. 

2.  This  natural  and  inalienable  right  to  the  equal  use  and  enjoyment  of 
land  is  so  apparent,  that  it  has  been  recognised  by  men  wherever  force  or 
habit  has  not  blunted  first  perceptions.  To  give  but  one  instance:  The  white 
settlers  of  New  Zealand  found  themselves  unable  to  get  from  the  Maoris  what 
the  latter  considered  a  complete  title  to  land,  because,  although  a  whole  tribe 
might  have  consented  to  a  sale,  they  would  still  claim  with  every  new  child 
born  among  them  an  additional  payment  on  the  ground  that  they  had  parted 
with  only  their  own  rights,  and  could  not  sell  those  of  the  unborn.  The 
Government  was  obliged  to  step  in  and  settle  the  matter  by  buying  land  for  a 
tribal  annuity,  in  which  every  child  that  is  born  acquries  a  share  (Henry 
George,  Progress  and  Poverty,  bk.  vii.  ch.  i.  n.). 

3.  This  is  very  clearly  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  a  man  who  "bought" 
a  field  from  another  and  "devoted  it  to  the  Lord"  could  only  "devote"  the 
value  of  the  usufruct  till  the  next  year  of  Jubilee,  when  the  land  itself  re- 
turned "to  him  to  whom  the  possession  of  the  land  belonged"  (I-ev.  xxvii. 
22-24). 

4.  Le  but  principal  de  cette  institution  etait  de  maintenir  autant  dc 
possible  I'egalite  primitive  du  partage  des  ferres,  de  reparer  les  perturbations 
arrivees  dans  le  courant  de  quaranteneuf  ans,  et  de  prevenir  ainsi  le  complet 
et  durable  apprauvissement  de  certaines  families  plus  malheureuses  que 
d'autres"  (Diet.  Encycl.  de  la  Theol.  Catholique,  s.  v.  Jubile).  "With  the  con- 
sistent administration  of  this  law,  a  class  wholly  without  property  would  have 
been  impossible  in  Israel"  (Oehler,  Theol.  of  the  O.  T.,  i.  348.  Jahn  (Bibli- 
cal Arcncoology)  well  describes  the  Jubilee  as  "a  regulation  which  prevented 
the  rich  from  coming  into  possession  [by  "free  trade  in  land"]  of  large  tracts 
of  land,  and  then  leasing  them  out  in  small  parcels  to  the  poor;  a  practice 
which  anciently  prevailed,  and  does  to  this  day,  in  the  East."  [Heinrich 
Heine  writes:     Moses  endeavoured  to  bring  property  into  harmony  with  mor- 

53 


rendered  alike  impossible.  Although  there  might  be,  and 
naturally  would  be,  inequalities  arising  from  varying  de- 
grees of  industry,  there  would  be  no  such  extremes  of 
poverty  and  riches  as  we  are  familiar  with.  The  two 
idle  classes — the  wealthy  idlers  of  the  West  end  and 
the  starving  idlers  of  the  East  —  which  disgrace  our 
modern  ''civilisation,"  could  not  coexist  with  the  equal- 
ity pf  opportunity  secured  by  the  Hebrew  Law.  The 
prayer  of  Agur,  the  son  of  Jakeh,  perhaps  represents  the 
ideal  of  such  a  society.  "Give  me  neither  poverty  nor 
riches;  feed  me  with  food  convenient  for  me;  lest  I  be 
full  and  deny  Thee,  and  say.  Who  is  the  Lord?  or  lest 
I  be  poor,  and  steal,  and  take  the  name  of  my  God  in 
vain."^  ''The  sleep  of  a  labouring  man  is  sweet,  whether 
he  eat  little  or  much ;  but  the  abundance  of  the  rich  will 
not  suffer  him  to  sleep.  There  is  a  sore  evil  which  I  have 
seen  under  the  sun,  namely,  riches  kept  for  the  owners 
thereof  to  their  hurt."^  A  writer  in  the  Book  of  Pro- 
verbs tells  us  that  "much  food  is  in  the  tilled  land  of  the 
poor;  but  there  is  that  is  destroyed  by  reason  of  injus- 
tice,''^ while  Isaiah^  drives  the  lesson  home  by  his  descrip- 
tion of  the  barrenness  of  the  land  under  monopoly. 
"There  is  that  withholdeth  what  is  justly  due,  but  it  tend- 
eth  only  to  want.  .  .  .  He  that  withholdeth  corn  [and, 
may  we  not  add,  he  that  withholdeth  the  land  on  which 
alone  the  corn  can  be  grown],  the  people  shall  curse 
him."^  "As  the  partridge  sitteth  on  eggs,  and  hatcheth 
them  not ;  so  he  that  getteth  riches,  and  not  by  right,  shall 

ality,  with  the  true  law  of  reason,  and  this  he  accomplished  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  Year  of  Jubilee,  in  which  alienated  land  that  was  inherited  .  .  . 
fell  back  to  the  original  owner,  regardless  of  the  manner  in  which  it  had  been 
disposed  of.  This  institution  forms  the  most  decided  contrast  to  that  "out- 
lawry" with  the  Romans,  where  after  the  lapse  of  a  certain  time  the  actual 
possessor  of  a  property  could  not  be  compelled  by  the  legitimate  owner  to 
return  the  property,  if '  he  could  not  bring  evidence  to  show  that  he  had  de- 
manded restitution  in  due  legal  form.  This  last  condition  left  the  field  open 
to  every  possible  fraud,  especially  in  a  state  where  despotism  and  jurispru- 
dence were  in  bloom,  and  where  the  unlav/ful  possessor  had  in  his  power  all 
the  means  of  intimidation,  especially  when  confronted  by  the  poor  man  who 
could  not  afford  the  expenses  which  a  contest  involved.  The  Roman  was 
soldier  and  lawyer  at  the  same  time,  and  he  knew  how  to  defend  with  his  glib 
tongue  the  property  taken  from  others,  often  with  the  sword. — 5".]. 

1.  Prov.  XXX.  8,  9. 

2.  Eccles.  V.  12,  13. 

3.  Prov.    xiii.  23  (R.  V.  m.). 

4.  Isa.  V.  10;  see  above,  ch.  iii.  §  11. 

5.  Prov.  xi.  24,  26  (R.  V.  m.). 

53 


leave  them  in  the  midst  of  his  days,  and  at  his  end 
shall  be  a  iooV'^  For  ^'better  is  a  little  with  righteous- 
ness than  great  revenues  with  injustice.'''^ 

§  7.  The  price  paid  on  such  "sales"  was  naturally 
based  upon  the  number  of  years  that  were  to  elapse  be- 
fore the  next  Year  of  Jubilee:  so  many  years'  purchase 
of  the  usufruct. 

"And  if  thou  sell  aught  unto  thy  neighbour,  or  buyest 
ought  of  thy  neighbour's  hand,  ye  shall  not  oppress  [R.  V., 
wrong]  one  another.  According  to  the  number  of  years  after 
the  Jubilee  thou  shalt  buy  of  thy  neighbour,  and  according 
unto  the  number  of  years  of  the  fruits  [R.V.,  crops]  he  shall 
sell  unto  thee.  According  to  the  multitude  of  years  thou  shalt 
increase  the  price  thereof,  and  according  to  the  fewness  of 
years  thou  shalt  diminish  the  price  of  it :  for  according  to 
the  number  of  the  years  of  the  fruits  [R.V.,  for  the  number 
of  the  crops]  doth  he  sell  unto  thee"  (Lev.  xxv.  14-16). 

Once  more  we  note  the  astonishing  modernity  of  the 
ancient  Law.  For,  if  the  testimony  of  Josephus  is  to  be 
believed,  the  Hebrew  legislation  had  already  drawn  a 
distinction  between  "land"  and  "agricultural  improve- 
ments," and  had  already  recognised  the  principle  of  com- 
pensation for  tenants'  improvements. 

"When  the  Jubilee  is  come,  which  name  denotes  liberty, 
he  that  sold  the  land,  and  he  that  bought  it,  meet  together, 
and  make  an  estimate,  on  the-  one  hand,  of  the  fruits  gath- 
ered, and,  on  the  other  hand,  of  the  expenses  laid  out  upon 
it.  If  the  fruits  gathered  come  to  more  than  the  expenses 
laid  out,  he  that  sold  it  takes  the  land  again;  but  if  the  ex- 
penses prove  more  than  the  fruits,  the  present  possessor  re- 
ceives of  the  former  owner  the  difference  that  was  wanting, 
and  leaves  the  land  to  him ;  and  if  the  fruits  received,  and  the 
expenses  laid  out,  prove  equal  to  one  another,  the  present 
possessor  relinquishes  it  to  the  former  owner."3 

That  is,  if  the  outgoing  tenant  has  spent  more  on  the 
land  than  he  has  got  out  of  it,  he  receives  compensation 
for  his  unexhausted  improvements. 

1.  Jer.  xvii.  11. 

2.  Prov.  xvi.  8  (R.  V.);  Ps.  xxxvii.  16. 

3.  Jos.,  Antiq.,  iij.  12.  283,  284. 

5i 


a 


§  8.  For  there  is  an  essential  difference  between  the 
''land/'  which  God  made,  and  the  ''improvements"  which 
the  labour  of  man  has  made  upon  the  land.  'Tor  every 
house  is  builded  by  some  man ;  but  He  that  built  all  things 
is  God/'^  Not  only  are  improvements  made  by  labour; 
they  have  to  be  maintained  by  labour.  "By  much  sloth- 
fulness  the  building  decayeth;  and  through  idleness  of 
the  hands  the  house  droppeth  through."^  Some  elemen- 
tary appreciation  of  this  economic  distinction,  not  per- 
haps much  more  definite  than  that  which  has  found  ex- 
pression in  our  own  proverb,  "God  made  the  country  and 
man  made  the  town/'  may  be  traced  in  the  provision  of 
the  Law  as  to  the  sale  of  houses. 

"If  a  man  sell  a  dwelling-house  in  a  walled  city,  then  he 
may  redeem  it  within  a  whole  year  after  it  is  sold;  within 
a  full  year  may  he  redeem  it.  And  if  it  be  not  redeemed  within 
the  space  of  a  full  year,  then  the  house  that  is  in  the  walled 
city  shall  be  established  for  ever  to  him  that  bought  it  through- 
out his  generations :  it  shall  not  go  out  in  the  Jubilee. 

"But  the  houses  of  the  villages  which  have  no  wall  about 
them  shall  be  counted  as  [R.V.,  reckoned  with]  the  fields  ot 
the  country;  they  may  be  redeemed,  and  they  shall  go  out  in 
the  Jubilee"   (Lev.  xxv.  29-31). 

That  is,  a  house  in  the  town  could  be  sold  "out  and 
out,"  but  houses  in  the  open  country  were  treated  as  a 
part  of  the  inheritance,  and  were  restored,  with  it,  at 
the  Jubilee.^  "This  provision  was  made  to  encourage 
strangers  and  proselytes  to  come  and  settle  among  them. 
Though  they  could  not  purchase  land  in  Canaan  for 
themselves  and  their  heirs,  yet  they  might  purchase  houses 
in  walled  cities,  which  would  be  most  convenient  for  them, 
who  w^ere  supposed  to  live  by  trade."^ 

§  9.  The  Law  clearly  recognises  the  fact  that  slavery, 
in  one  form  or  another,  is  caused  by  the  denial  of  equal 
rights  in  land.    So  long  as  the  Hebrew  retained  his  foot- 

1.  Heb.  iii.  4. 

2.  Eccles.  X.  18. 

8.  For  the  exceptional  treatment  of  the  Levites*  houses,  and  the  reason 
of  it,  see  Chapter  VI.     Lev.  xxv.  32-34. 

4.  Bush,  quoted  in  Gray's  Biblical  Museum  (on  Lev.  xxv.  29).  For  the 
Canaanite  traders,  see  p.  36,  n. 

55 


hold  upon  the  land,  he  enjoyed  freedom  and  had  within 
his  hand  the  opportunity  of  winning  a  comfortable  sub- 
sistence by  honest  toil.  No  landlord  could  rack-rent  him 
for  permission  to  till  the  ground,  or  confiscate  the  results 
of  his  industry  by  raising  the  rent  on  his  improvements. 
Economically  and  politically,  he  was  a  free  man.^  But 
if,  in  the  course  of  time,  he  lost  to  another  man  his  share 
in  the  land — through  misfortune,  or  laziness,  or  vice  on 
his  own  part ;  or  through  the  cunning  or  violence  of  his 
fellows — he  must  either  become  a  tramp,  or  hire  himself 
for  wages  to  a  brother-Israelite.  To  the  man  who  gained 
by  such  a  transaction  it  meant  the  beginning  of  monopoly : 
to  the  man  who  lost,  and  to  his  family,  a  descent  into 
social  slavery.  Wage-slavery  is  the  daughter  of  landlord- 
ism. 

"And  if  thy  brother  that  dwelleth  by  thee  be  waxen  poor,2 
and  be  sold  unto  thee;  thou  shalt  not  compel  him  to  serve 
as  a  bondservant;  but  as  an  hired  servant,^  and  as  a  sojourner, 
he  shall  be  with  thee,  and  shall  serve  thee  unto  the  Year  of 
Jubilee:  and  then  he  shall  depart  from  thee,  both  he  and  his 
children  with  him,  and  shall  return  unto  his  own  family,  and 
unto  the  possession  of  his  fathers  shall  he  return.  For  they 
are  My  servants,  which  I  brought  forth  out  of  the  land  of 
Egypt:  they  shall  not  be  sold  as  bondmen.  Thou  shalt  not 
rule  over  him  with  rigour;  but  shalt  fear  thy  God.''  (Lev. 
XXV.  39-43). 

The  kidnapping  of  a  brother  Hebrew  into  slavery  was 
punishable  by  death.*     But  the  Hebrews  were  permitted 

1.  Note,  in  the  story  of  Joseph,  the  express  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
the  people  of  Egypt,  by  selling  their  land  to  Pharaoh  during  the  famine,  be- 
came Pharaoh's  slaves  (Gen.  xlvii.  18-21);  and  cp.  Neh.  v.  5. 

2.  Note  the  sequence:  "If  thy  brother  be  waxen  poor  and  hath  sold  away 
some  of  his  possession  (verse  25)  .  .  .  and  be  fallen  in  decay  (35)  .  .  . 
and  be  sold"  (39).  See  an  instance  in  2  Kings  iv.  1;  cp.  Matt,  xviii.  25,  and 
Neh.  V.  5:  A  man  might  also  become  a  bond-slave  as  a  punishment  for  theft, 
if  unable  otherwise  to  make  restitution  (Ex.  xxii.  3).  Cp.  Jos.  Antia.,  iii. 
12.  282. 

3.  i.  e.  day-labourer.  A  "hired  servant,"  whether  native  or  foreigner,  was 
not  to  be  oppressed  or  defrauded  (Deut.  xxiv.  14;  cp.  Luke  xv.  17-19),  and 
his  wages  were  to  be  paid  every  evening  (Deut.  xxiv.  15;  Lev.  xix.  13;  Tob. 
iv.  14;  Matt.  xx.  2,  8-13.  [The  normal  day  of  labour  is  fixed  in  the  Jewish 
law  at  twelve  hours,  from  which  two  were  remitted  in  the  course  of  the  day 
for  meals  and  the  recital  of  the  prescribed  prayers — the  Shema  and  Tefillah  — 
thus  leaving  ten  hours  for  work.  Workmen  could  require  better  conditions, 
but  not  a  decrease  in  the  number  of  hours;  and  a  rise  in  wages  could  not 
secure  for  employers  increased  time,  but  a  better  quality  of  work. — S.] 

4.  Ex.  xxi.  16;  Deut.  xxiv.  7.  Man-stealing  is  the  only  form  of  robbery 
for  which  the  Law  awards  the  punishment  of  death.  For  the  stealing  of 
goods  or  cattle  the  penalty  is  restitution,  or  its  equivalent  in  labour. 

56 


to  make  slaves  of  the  captives  of  war,  and  to  buy  slaves 
''of  the  heathen  that  are  round  about  you,"^  to  treat  them 
as  property,^  and  to  leave  them  as  an  inheritance  to  their 
children.^ 

Even  foreign  settlers  among  the  Hebrews  were  sub- 
ject to  the  law  of  Jubilee,  so  far  as  their  Hebrew  slaves 
were  concerned.  If  a  rich  foreigner  bought  a  Hebrew  as 
his  slave,  he  must  treat  him  as  ''a  yearly  hired  servant," 
and  must  set  him  free  in  the  Year  of  Jubilee,^  if  he 
had  not,  in  the  meantime,  been  able  to  redeem  himself,  or 
been  redeemed  by  a  kinsman. 

So,  once  in  every  generation  did  the  Law  ''proclaim 
liberty  to  the  captives''  in  "the  acceptable  Year  of  the 
Lord."^  Well  does  one  of  the  prophets  call  it  "the  Year 
of  Liberty.''^ 

The  emancipation  of  the  man  and  the  restoration  of 
the  land  go  hand  in  hand.  The  same  law  applies  to  both : 
the  Jubilee  sets  them  both  equally  free.  Means  are  pro- 
vided by  which  even  before  the  Jubilee,  under  favouring 

1.  Lev.  XXV.  44-46;  Num.  xxxi.  18,  26,  27;  Deut.  xx.  14;  1  Kings  ix.  21. 

2.  "Nor  his  manservant,  nor  his  maidservant,  nor  his  ox,  nor  his  ass,  nor 
anything  that  is  thy  neighbour's"  (Ex.  xx.  17) ;  cp.  xxi.  21,  "for  he  is  his 
money." 

3.  The  later  teaching,  fully  developed  only  in  the  N.  T.,  extended  the 
older  Jewish  conception  of  the  brotherhood  of  the  children  of  Abraham  so  as 
to  include  all  the  children  of  Adam.  ("Christ  was  not  the  second  Abraham, 
but  the  second  Adam." — Rev.  Thos.  Hancock.)  When  Malachi  (ii.  10)  asked: 
"Have  we  not  all  one  Father?  hath  not  one  God  created  us?  why  do  we  deal 
treacherously  every  man  against  his  brother,  by  profaning  the  covenant  of 
our  fathers?"  he  was  thinking  only  of  his  own  nation.  But  the  universal 
Fatherhood  of  God,  as  preached  by  Jesus  Christ,  and  St.  Paul  on  Mars'  Hill, 
made  slavery  logically  impossible  to  Christians.  "God  that  made  the  world 
and  all  things  therein  .  .  .  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men  for 
to  dwell  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  ...  As  certain  also  of  your  own  poets 
have  said.  For  we  also  are  His  offspring"  (Acts  xvii.  24,  26,  28).  In  the 
Jews'  morning  prayer,  the  men,  in  three  consecutive  benedictions,  bless  God 
"Who  hath  not  made  me  a  Gentile  ...  a  slave  ...  a  woman"  (Taylor 
Sayings,  J.  F.,  p.  15,  n.).  St.  Paul  certainly  had  this  prayer  in  mind  when 
he  dictated  Gal.  iii.  28.  [The  reason  why  the  Jewish  ritual  contains  the  pas- 
sage "not  ...  a  Gentile  ...  a  slave  ...  a  woman"  is,  that  these 
three  classes  were  exempt  from  certain  religious  obligations — S.}  Jesus  ben 
Sirach  exhorts  the  master,  for  motives  of  self-interest,  to  "entreat"  the  slave 
whom  he  has  bought  "as  a  brother"  (Ecclus.  xxxiii.  30,  31).  St.  Paul  may 
have  been  thinking  of  this  passage  when  he  wrote  about  the  runaway  slave 
Onesimus  (Philem.  16),  but  the  reason  he  gives  is  based  on  higher  grounds. 

4.  Lev.  XXV.  47-55. 

5.  Isa.  Ixi.  2;  Luke  iv.  18,  19. 
fi.     Ezek.  xlvi.  17. 

57 


conditions,  the  man  may  be  redeemed  from  bondage/  or 
the  land  from  the  hand  of  the  stranger.^ 

There  are  few  tracts  on  the  Land  Question  so  thought- 
provoking  as  to  the  first  principles  of  just  social  relation- 
ships as  the  little  leaflet  which  has  floated  down  to  us 
through  the  ages,  and  which  we  usually  refer  to  as  the 
twenty-fifth  chapter  of  Leviticus.  The  details  of  the 
legislation  there  recorded  have  long  ceased  to  have  other 
than  an  antiquarian  interest,  but  the  principles  they  em- 
body and  illustrate  are  eternal.  We  have  here  at  once 
one  of  the  most  ancient  and  one  of  the  most  modern 
treatises  on  the  Land  Question;  for  it  is  based  on  the 
fundamental  truth  that  private  property  in  land  is  private 
property  in  man;  that  landlordism  is  slavery;  that  Land 
and  Liberty  are  both  essential  to  the  well-being  of  a 
Nation. 

1.  Lev.  XXV.  48-52. 

2.  Lev.  XXV.  25-28. 


58 


CHAPTER   V 

LAND,  LABOUR,  LEISURE  AND 
LEARNING 

"Ye  shall  keep  My  Sabbaths  ...  I  am  the  Lord." — Lev.  xix. 
30,  XXV.  2;  Ex.  xxxi.  13. 

"The  wisdom  of  a  learned  man  cometh  by  opportunity  of 
leisure.  .  .  .  How  can  he  get  wisdom  that  holdeth  the  plough, 
and  that  glorieth  in  the  goad,  that  driveth  oxen,  and  is  occupied 
in  their  labours,  and  whose  talk  is  of  bullocks  ?  ...  So  every  car- 
penter and  workmaster  .  .  .  the  smith  also  sitting  by  the  anvil 
.  .  .  the  potter  .  .  .  turning  the  wheel  about  with  his  feet  .  .  . 
without  these  cannot  a  city  be  inhabited.  They  will  maintain 
the  state  of  the  world,  and  their  desire  is  in  the  work  of  their 
craft." — Ecclus.  xxxviii.  24-34. 

"Rabban  Gamliel  said.  Excellent  is  Torah  study  together  with 
worldly  business,  for  the  practice  of  them  both  puts  iniquity 
out  of  remembrance;  and  all  Torah  without  work  must  fail  at 
length  and  encourage  iniquity." — Sayings  J.F,,  ii.  2 

"R.  Lazar  ben  Azariah  said.  No  Torah,  no  culture:  no  cul- 
ture, no  Torah." — Sayings  J.F.,  iii.  26. 

§  1.  There  is  not,  at  first  sight,  a  very  obvious  con- 
nection between  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath  and  the 
Land  Question.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Hebrew  nation- 
al life  was  marked  out  by  a  great  cycle  of  Sabbatical 
periods,  of  which  the  Jubilee  was,  as  it  were,  the  cul- 
minating point.  Every  seventh  day  was  a  Sabbath  day. 
Every  seventh  year  was  a  Sabbath  year.  When  "seven 
Sabbaths  of  years  .  .  .  seven  times  seven  years'*^  had 
been  kept,  the  fiftieth  year,  closing  the  cycle,  was  kept 
as  the  Year  of  Jubilee.  The  whole  series  of  Sabbatical 
holidays  were  threaded  on  one  string,  and  formed  so 
many  links  in  the  chain  of  a  just  agrarian  system. 

1.     Lev.  XXV.  8. 

59 


One  is  almost  tempted  to  include  in  the  cycle  (although, 
perhaps,  it  does  not  strictly  belong  to  it)  the  seventh 
month/  which,  by  reason  of  its  religious  festivals,  kept 
as  general  holidays,  was  largely  a  sacred,  and  therefore  a 
holiday,  month;  for  the  Feast  of  Trumpets,  the  Day  of 
Atonement,  and  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  or  Harvest 
Thanksgiving  (kept  up  for  eight  days)  all  occurred  in 
it.2 

§  2.  In  Egypt,  the  Israelites  had  suffered  the  bitter- 
ness of  unremitting  and  hopeless  toil.  "The  Egyptians 
made  the  children  of  Israel  to  serve  with  rigour:  and  they 
made  their  lives  bitter  with  hard  bondage,  in  mortar, 
and  in  brick,  and  in  all  manner  of  service  in  the  field: 
all  their  service,  wherein  they  made  them  serve,  was  with 
rigour."^  Moses  sought  to  teach  them  the  needful  lesson 
that  work  and  rest,  each  in  its  own  time  and  in  due  pro- 
portion, were  both  sacred ;  good  alike  for  master  and  ser- 
vant, for  man  and  beast.  There  was  a  danger,  on  tlie 
one  hand,  that  long  experience  of  grinding  slavery  might 
have  reduced  the  Israelites  to  the  wretched  condition  in 
which  slum-children  have  sometimes  been  found  in  schools 
in  London  and  New  York,  of  "not  knowing  how  to  play" ; 
a  danger,  on  the  other  hand,  of  a  violent  reaction  against 
regular  work,  on  the  ground  that  all  work  was  a  form  of 
slavery.    Hence  the  obligation  to  observe  the  Sabbath  as 

1.  i.  e.  Tishri  (October),  the  seventh  month  of  the  ecclesiastical  year. 
It  was  the  first  month  of  the  civil  year.  The  Feast  of  Trumpets  was  therefore 
the  Hebrew  "New  Year's  Day"  (Lev.  xxiii.  24;  Num.  xxix.  1). 

2.  Lev.  xxiii.  23-44;  Num.  xxix  The  first,  tenth,  fifteenth  and  twentv- 
second  days  of  Tishri  were  public  holidays:  "Ye  shall  do  no  (servile)  work 
therein"  (Lev.  xxiii.  25,  28,  31,  35,  36).  On  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  or 
Booths — the  autumnal  "Feast  of  Ingathering" — see  Ex.  xxiii.  16;  Lev.  xxiii. 
34-36  and  39-43;  Num.  xxix.  12  flf.;  Deut.  xvi.  13-15;  Ezek.  xlv.  25.  Ac- 
counts of  actual  observances  of  this  festival  are  given  in  1  Kings  viii.  2,  65 
(Solomon);  Ezra.  iii.  1-4;  Neh.  viii.  13-18  (Ezra);  and  cp.  2  Mace.  x.  6-8. 
The  other  principal  feasts  were  the  Passover  (lasting  for  a  week)  and  Pente- 
cost, fifty  days  later  at  wheat-harvest.  At  the  three  principal  feast's  every 
male  citizen,  unless  for  sufficient  excuse,  was  expected  to  make  a  pilgrimage 
to  the  central  sanctuary,  and  to  join  the  general  assembly  of  the  nation;  to 
"appear  before  the  Lord  thy  God  in  the  place  which  He  shall  choose"  (Deut. 
XVI.  16;  Ex.  xxiii.  14-17,  xxxiv.  23,  etc.).  It  will  be  noted  that  one  of  the 
three  great  festivals  was  held  in  commemoration  of  the  deliverance  of  the 
Israelites  from  Egypt,  and  that  the  other  two  were  directly  connected  with  the 
cultivation  of  the  land.  The  Feast  of  Tabernacles  also  commemorated  the 
wanderings  in  the  wilderness. 

3.  Ex.  i.  13,  14,  V.  6-19.  Note  the  striking  phrase,  "the  iron  furnace  of 
Egypt"  (Deut.  iv.  20;  1  Kings  viii.  51;  Jer.  xi.  4;  and  cp.  Isa.  xlviii.  10). 

60 


a  weekly  rest-day.  It  was  at  once  a  holy-day  and  a  hol- 
iday. On  it,  agricultural  labour^  and  trading^  were  spec- 
ifically forbidden.  But  it  was  a  feast,  and  not  a  fast;^ 
and,  like  all  the  national  festivals,  a  time  of  '"rejoicing" 
for  all  the  members  of  the  Hebrew  household,  a  "de- 
light,'' a  day  of  "mirth."^  Its  observance  was  secured  by 
the  strongest  possible  sanctions.  Its  benefits  were  ex- 
tended alike  to  native  and  to  foreign  settler,  to  master 
and  to  slave,  to  man  and  to  beast.  The  sabbatical  law  ap- 
pealed to  the  religious  sentiment,  by  connecting  the  weekly 
rest-day  with  the  rest  of  God  the  Creator  f  to  humanitar- 
ian sympathy;^  and  to  the  traditions  of  the  race.  For 
here,  as  is  so  often  the  case  in  the  Law,  the  remembrance 
of  the  deliverance  from  slavery  is  appealed  to  as  the 
ground  of  right-doing.  "Remember  that  thou  wast  a  ser- 
vant in  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  that  the  Lord  thy  God 
brought  thee  out  thence  through  a  mighty  hand  and  by 
a  stretchedout  arm;  therefore  the  Lord  thy  God  com- 
mandeth  thee  to  keep  the  Sabbath  day.""^  So  important 
to  the  general  welfare  was  the  observance  of  this  law 
considered,  that  the  punishment  for  its  infraction  was 
death.^ 

§  3.  Modern  Sabbatarians,  who,  forgetting  that  "the 
Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  and  not  man  for  the  Sab- 
bath."^ seek  to  apply  these  Jewish  enactments  to  the  first 
day  of  the  week,  are  apt  to  overlook  the  fact  that  the 
Fourth  Commandment  is  as  much  a  labour  law  as  a  rest 
law.  Its  opening  w^ords  are,  "Six  days  shalt  thou  labour.''^^ 
Seven  days'  idleness  involves  a  much  more  frequent  in- 
fraction of  the  command  than  seventh-day  work  does. 
"God's  covenant  with  us,"  said  Rabbi  Akiba,^^  "included 

1.  Ex.  xxxiv.  21  ("earing"rr:Ploughing). 

2.  Neh.  X.  31,  xiii.  15-22;  Jer.  xvii.  19-27;  Amos  viii.  5.. 

3.  Lev.  xxiii.  1-3;  Jud.  viii.  6. 

4.  Deut.  xii.  12,  18,  xiv.  26,  xvi.  11;  Isa.  Iviii.  13,  14;  Hos.  ii  11. 

5.  Ex.  XX.  11,  xxxi  17;  Gen.  ii.  2,  3. 

6.  Ex.  xxiii.  12;  Deut.  V.  14. 

7.  Deut.  V.  15;  Ezek.  xx.  10-12. 

8.  Ex.  xxxi.  14,  XXXV.  2;  Num.  xv.  30-36. 

9.  Mark  ii.  27. 

10.  Cp.  Ezek.  xlvi.  1:     "The  six  working  days    ...    the  Sabbath." 

11.  Talmud,  Ahoth  d.  R.  Nathan,  xi.  Cp.  He  alone  will  enjoy  the  repose 
of  the  Sabbath  who  has  laboured  on  the  eve  of  the  Sabbath. — Ahod.  Sar.  8*. 
See  Herman  Gollancz,  "Dignity  of  Labour  as  Taught  in  the  Talmud,"   Imperial 


work;  for  the  command,  'Six  days  shalt  thou  work,  and 
the  seventh  shalt  thou  rest,'  made  the  'rest'  conditional 
upon  the  'work'."  The  principles  of  a  true  Sabbatarian- 
ism would  necessitate  the  abolition  alike  of  overwork  and 
of  idleness,  the  extinction  of  all  the  idle  classes — of  those 
who  are  idle  (and  rich)  because  they  "need  not  work,"  as 
w^ell  as  of  those  who  are  idle  (and  poor)  because  they 
cannot  get  work  to  do.  The  Church  of  England  Catech- 
ism paraphrases  the  Fourth  Commandment  in  very  gen- 
eral terms:  "To  serve  Him  truly  all  the  days  of  my 
life."  St.  Paul  annotates  it,  from  the  Christian  stand- 
point, in  a  very  remarkable  passage — 

"Now  we  command  you,  brethren,  in  the  name  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  that  ye  withdraw  yourselves  from  every 
brother  that  walketh  disorderly,  and  not  after  the  tradition 
which  he  received  of  us.  .  .  .  For  even  when  we  were  with 
you,  this  we  commanded  you,  that  if  any  would  not  work, 
neither  should  he  eatA  For  we  hear  that  there  are  some 
which  walk  among  you  disorderly,  working  not  at  all,  but 
are  busybodies^  Now  them  that  are  such  we  command  and 
exhort  by  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  that  with  quietness  they 
work  and  eat  their  own  bread^  .  .  .  and  if  any  man  obey  not 
our  word  by  this  epistle,  note  that  man,  and  have  no  company 
with  him,  that  he  may  be  ashamed."    (^Thess.  iii.  6,  10-14). 

§  4.  The  securing  to  all  Englishmen  of  opportunity 
both  for  work  and  leisure  depends,  not  upon  the  literal 

and  Asiatic  Quarterly  Revieiu,  July,  1891.  [The  Talmud:  "Love  work;  do 
not  despise  it,  or  consider  thyself  superior  to  it."  "Only  he  who  tilleth  tht 
soil  will  be  nourished  by  it."  "Great  is  labour,  for  it  honours  the  labourer." 
"Greater  even  than  the  God-fearing  man  is  he  who  lives  by  his  toil."  "Fla> 
a  carcase  in  the  street  and  take  thy  wages,  and  say  not,  I  am  a  great  man 
and  the  occupation  is  beneath  me." — 5".] 

1.  R.  v.:     "If  any  will  not  work,  neither  let  him  eat." 

2.  Shemaiah  said:  "Love  work  and  hate  lordship;  and  make  not  thyself 
known  to  the  Government. — Sayings,  J.  F.,  i.  10. 

3.  The  idler  who  consurnes  without  producing  is  a  thief.  Note  the  anti- 
thesis in  Eph.  iv.  28:  "Let  nim  that  stole  steal  no  more,  but  rather  let  him 
labour,  working  with  his  hands  the  thing  that  is  good";  and  2  Thess.  iii.  7,  8; 
"Neither  did  we  eat  any  man's  bread  for  naught,  but  wrought  [worked]  with 
labour  and  travail,"  etc.  (cp.  Acts  xviii.  3,  xx.  33-35);  and  again  (1  Thess.  iv. 
11,  12):  "And  that  ye  study  to  be  quiet,  and  to  do  your  own  business,  and 
to  work  with  your  own  hands,  as  we  commanded  you:  that  ye  maty  walk 
honestly  toward,  them  that  are  without  and  that  ye  may  have  lack  of  nothing"; 
and  once  again  (Tit.  iii.  14,  R.  V.  m.):  "And  let  our  people  learn  to  pro- 
fess honest  occupations  for  necessary  wants,  that  they  be  not  unfruitful" 
[t.  e.  useless]. — "He  who  does  not  teach  his  son  some  handicraft  is  as  though 
he  had  trained  him  to  become  a  robber"  (Talmud,  Kidduschin,  82).  "If  any 
provide  not  for  his  own,  and  specially  for  those  of  his  own  house[hold],  he 
hath  denied  the  faith,  and  is  worse  than  an  infidel"  (1  Tim.  v.  8). 

62 


application  of  part  of  the  letter  of  the  Fourth  Command- 
ment to  one  day  of  the  week,  but  upon  the  observance  of 
the  spirit  of  the  Hebrew  land  laws  with  which  all  the 
sabbatical  institutions  were  originally  so  closely  connected. 
The  language  of  the  Law  shows  this  connection  quite 
clearly — 

"When  ye  come  into  the  land  which  I  give  you,  then 
shall  the  land  keep  a  sabbath  unto  the  Lord.  Six  years  thou 
shalt  sow  thy  field,  and  six  years  thou  shalt  prune  thy 
vineyard,  and  gather  in  the  fruit  thereof;  but  in  the  seventh 
year  shall  be  a  sabbath  of  rest  unto  the  land,  a  sabbath  for 
the  Lord :  thou  shalt  neither  sow  thy  field  nor  prune  thy 
vineyard. 

"That  which  groweth  of  its  own  accord  of  thy  harvest 
thou  shalt  not  reap,  neither  gather  the  grapes  of  thy  vine  un- 
dressed :  for  it  is  a  year  of  rest  unto  the  land"  (Lev.  xxv. 
1-7,  18-22). 


The  connection  between  Sabbath  day  and  sabbath  year  is 
even  more  briefly  and  forcibly  expressed  in  the  parallel 
phrases  of  Ex.  xxiii.  10-12  [R.V.] — 


Six  years  thou  shalt  sow  thy 
land,  and  shalt  gather  in  the 
increase  thereof; 

but  the  seventh  year  thou  shalt 
let  it  rest  and  lie  fallow; 

that  the  poor  of  thy  people  may 
eat:  and  v/hat  they  leave  the 
beast  of  the  field  shall  eat. 

In  like  manner  thou  shalt  deal 
with  thy  vineyard,  and  with 
thy  oliveyard. 


Six   days  thou  shalt  do  thy 
work, 


and  on  the  seventh  day  thou 
shalt  rest : 

that  thine  ox  and  thine  ass 
may  have  rest,  and  the  son  of 
thy  handmaid,  and  the  strang- 
er, may  be  refreshed. 


§  5.  The  seventh  year  was  also  called  the  ''year  of 
release,"  partly  because  the  land  was  "released"^  from 
cultivation,  and  partly  because  there  was  then  a  general 
remittance  of  all   debts   due   from  one  Hebrew  to  an- 


1.     See  R.  V.  m.  at  Ex.  xxiii.  11. 


63 


other/  and  a  manumission  of  all  Hebrew  bond-servants.^ 
The  war-cries  of  monopolists  against  reform  in  modern 
times  would  have  been  treated  with  scanty  respect  by 
Moses  and  the  prophets.  They  recognised  neither  the 
right  of  the  landlord  to  ''do  what  he  liked  with  his  own/' 
nor  the  "sacredness  of  (private)  contract"  made  against 
public  policy,  nor  the  inalienable  right  of  every  (white) 
man  to  "whop  his  own  nigger,"  or  to  sweat  his  own  wage- 
slave.  The  Law  aimed  at  making  involuntary  and  unde- 
served poverty,  as  nearly  as  might  be,  impossible.  When 
and  where,  through  the  vices  or  frailty  of  human  nature, 
it  crept  in,  temporarily  and  in  spite  of  the  Law,  the  most 
careful  provision  was  made  for  mitigating  its  evils. 

§  6.  To  the  average  Englishman,  who  no  longer 
keeps  Saints'  days,  and  who  feverishly  rushes  through 
long  railway  journeys  on  four  "Bank  holidays"  in  the 
year,  the  idea  of  one  year's  rest  in  every  seven  from  his 
ordinary  occupations  must  seem  an  impossibly  comic  sug- 
gestion. And,  -besides,  he  will  probably  ask,  what  was 
the  use  of  it?    Let  us  see. 

(a).  The  orignal  division  of  the  land  secured  to  every 
Hebrew  family  the  equal  right  of  access  to  land.  The 
Year  of  Jubilee  was  intended  as  one  of  the  means  for 
conserving  that  equal  right  from  generation  to  generation. 
So  far  as  it  went,  the  Jubilee  Law  secured  to  each  family 
in  each  generation  the  right  of  access,  for  labour  use,  to 
an  approximately  equal  share  of  land. 

But  the  Hebrew  system  of  cultivation  was  very  primi- 
tive.   The  plough  was  merely  a  big  crooked  stick  attached 

1.  Deut.  XV.  1-11.  Or  rather  perhaps,  as  Keil  (Biblical  Archxcology,  ii. 
10)  suggests,  an  arrest  on  the  collection  of  debts;  "there  is  enjoined  on  the 
creditor,  for  this  year,"  during  which  no  crops  could  be  gathered,  "a  leaving 
over  (t.  e.  respite),  not  remission  or  acquittal."  The  Talmud  (Shebiith,  x.  1) 
says  that  labourers'  wages  are  not  "released." 

2.  Deut.  XV.  12-14.  On  the  face  of  it,  here  and  in  Ex.  xxi.  2;  Jer. 
xxxiv.  8-17  (cp.  Josephus,  Antiq.  iv.  8.  273,  xvi.  1,  3),  it  looks  as  if  the 
seventh  year  of  their  service  is  meant,  and  not  the  regularly  recurring 
"seventh  year"  of  fallow.  The  whole  question  of  the  relation  of  this  law  to 
the  sabbath-year  law,  and  to  the  Jubilee,  is  admittedly  difficult,  and  involves 
questions  of  historical  and  literary  criticism  beyond  the  scooe  of  the  present 
book.  See  Lev.  xxv.  39-43,  and  consult  the  larger  modern  Bible  Dictionaries 
and  Commentaries;  and  Mr.  Wicksteed's  article  referred  to  on  p.  18n.  If  the 
"bondman"  had  married  into  the  family  or  clan,  he  could  voluntarily  be- 
come a  permanent  member  of  it  (Ex.  xxii.  5,  6). 


to  a  wooden  frame  (1  Kings  xix.  21),  shod  with  a  tri- 
angular piece  of  iron  (1  Sam.  xiii.  19-21;  Isa.  ii.  4;  Joel 
iii.  10;  Mic.  iv.  3).  It  was  usually  drawn  by  oxen,  some- 
times by  asses,  yoked  together,^  the  ploughman  guiding 
the  plough  with  one  hand  (Luke  ix.  62),  and  using  the 
goad — an  instrument  like  a  spear  and  capable  at  need  of 
being  used  as  one  (Judg.  iii.  31) — with  the  other. 

The  ploughing  with  such  a  light  instrument  was  neces- 
sarily shallow.^  There  are  but  feeble  traces  of  the  sys- 
tematic use  of  manure.  The  rotation  of  crops  was  almost 
certainly  unknown.  Had  the  Hebrew  cultivator  been 
allowed  to  keep  on  growing  the  same  crop  from  year  to 
year  on  the  same  land,  without  any  intermission,  there 
would  always  be  a  danger  of  exhausting  even  the  fertile 
soil  of  Canaan,  and  of  handing  on  to  later  generations  a 
possession  undiminished,  indeed,  in  area,  but  of  stead- 
ily decreasing  productiveness.  The  Law  therefore  safe- 
guarded the  equal  rights  of  future  generations  by  enact- 
ing a  periodical  fallow.  During  one  year  in  every  seven, 
the  soil,  left  to  the  influences  oi  sun  and  frost,  wind  and 
rain,  was  to  be  allowed  to  ''re-create''  itself  after  six 
years'  cropping,  exactly  as  the  tiller  of  the  soil  renewed 
his  strength,  after  six  days'  work,  by  his  Sabbath  day's 
rest.  "The  seventh  year  thou  shalt  let  the  land  rest  and 
lie  fallow."    "It  is  a  year  of  rest  to  the  land."^ 

1.  Amos  vi.  12;  Isa.  xxx.  24  ("ear"=plough) ;  cp.  Deut.  xxii.  10.  A 
"yoke"  (1  Sam.  xiv.  14;  the  explanatory  words  in  italics  are  not  in  the 
original)  was  a  recognised  measure  of  land;  in  Isa.  v.  10  translated  "acre." 
So  Latin  jugum.  "lugum  vocabatur,  quod  uno  iugo  bourn  in  die  exarari 
posset"  (Plin.,  Nat.  Hist.,  xviii.  3.  3).  ["They  gave  him  of  the  cornland. 
That  was  of  public  right,  As  much  as  two  strong  oxen  Could  plough  from 
morn  till  night"  (Macaulay).] 

2.  Syria  tenui  sulco  arat  (Plin.  xviii.  47).  Vergil  (Georgica,  i.  169) 
and  Pliny  (Nat.  Hist.,  xviii.  48)  describe  the  same  sort  of  plough  as  being  in 
use  among  the  Romans  at  their  time. 

3.  The  writer  of  2  Chron.  xxxvi.  21  ascribes  the  desolation  of  the  land 
during  the  Captivity  to  the  non-observance  of  the  Sabbath  years  (Jer.  xxxiv. 
8-22;  cp.  Lev.  xxvi.  14,  34,  35).  "Captivity  comes  upon  the'world  for  strange 
worship;  and  for  incest;  and  for  shedding  of  blood;  and  for  (not)  giving 
release  to  the  land"  (Sayings  J.  F.,  v.  14).  After  the  Captivity  the  observ- 
ance was  restored  (Neh.  x.  31:  "And  that  he  would  leave  [R.V.,  forgo]  the 
seventh  year  and  the  exaction  of  every  debt").  Later  1  Mace.  vi.  49,  53. 
Josephus  has  several  interesting  references  to  the  non-cultivation  of  the  land 
in  the  "Sabbatic  year"  (Antiq.  xiii.  8.  234,  xv.  1.  7;  Jewish  War,  i.  2.  60)  and 
refers  to  the  remission  of  tribute  in  that  year  on  that  account  (Antiq.  xi.  8. 
337,  345,  xiv.  10.  202).  The  observance  of  the  septennial  fallow  has  recentlv 
(since  1888-9)  been  revived  by  the  Zionist  Jews  in  Palestine  (Jewish  Encyct, 
x.  607;  Murray's  Illus.  Bible  Dictionary,  759). 

65 


§  7.  But,  (b)  while  the  main  object  of  the  Sabbath 
year  was  undoubtedly  the  protection  of  the  land-rights 
of  future  generations,  it  was,  by  a  statesman-like  pro- 
vision, made  useful  to  the  present  generation  also.  It 
was  to  be  a  year  of  rest,  truly,  but  not  of  idleness ;  a  year 
of  re-creation,  not  of  mere  cessation  from  work.  It 
was  only  agricultural  labour  that  was  forbidden — plough- 
ing, sowing,  reaping,  pruning,  vintage.^  Other  occupa- 
tions were,  undoubtedly,  permitted,  but  the  leisure  from 
the  ordinary  work  of  the  farm  and  vineyard  was  used, 
at  least  in  part,  for  educational  ends. 

"Moses  commanded  them,  saying,  At  the  end  of  ever> 
seven  years,  in  the  solemnity  of  the  year  of  release,  in  the 
feast  of  tabernacles,  when  all  Israel  is  come  to  appear  before 
the  Lord  thy  God  in  the  place  which  He  shall  choose,  thou 
shalt  read  this  law  before  all  Israel  in  their  hearing.2  Gather 
the  people  together,  men,  and  women,  and  children,  and  thy 
stranger  that  is  within  thy  gates,  that  they  may  hear,  and  that 
they  may  learn,  and  fear  the  Lord  your  God,  and  observe  to 
do  all  the  words  of  this  law;  and  that  their  children,  which 
have  not  known  anything,  may  hear,  and  learn  to  fear  the 
Lord  your  God,  as  long  as  ye  live  in  the  land  wither  ye  go 
over  Jordan  to  possess  it."3 

§  8.  To  say  that,  in  the  seventh  year,  the  Israelites 
attended  a  Bible  class  conducted  by  their  clergy  would 
be  to  use  one  of  those  dangerous  phrases  which  com- 
pletely misrepresent  the  facts  of  the  case  under  the  ap- 
pearance of  stating  the  bare,  literal  truth  about  them.  It 
is  true,  of  course,  that  the  rolls  of  the  "Law  of  Moses" 
now  form  part  of  what  we  now  call  the  Bible — the  col- 
lection of  ancient  writings  from  which  extracts  are  read 
in  church  services.    The  peculiar  position  so  long  assign- 

1.  Lev.  XXV.  4,  5. 

2.  Parallels  are  abundant  in  English  history.  E.  g.  "For  the  more  as- 
surance of  this  thing  we  will  and  grant  that  all  Archbishops  and  Bishops  for 
ever  shall  read  this  present  Charter  in  their  Cathedral  churches  twice  in  the 
year,  and  upon  the  reading  thereof  in  every  one  of  their  parish  churches 
shall  openly  denounce  accursed  all  those  that  willingly  do  procure  to  be  done 
anything  contrary  to  the  tenor  force  and  effect  of  this  present  Charter  in  any 
point  or  article"  (34  Edw.  1.  stat.  4,  cap.  6). 

3.  Deut.  xxxi.  10-13;  Neh.  viii.  16-18  (cp.  especially  verses  7,  8:  "The 
Levites  caused  the  people  to  understand  the  Law.  ...  So  they  read  in  the 
book  in  the  law  of  God  distinctly  [R.  V.,  with  an  interpretation],  and  gave  the 
sense,  and  caused  them  to  understand  the  reading").  See  also  Josephus, 
Antiq.  iv.  8.  209. 

66 


ed  to  these  Hebrew  writings  in  our  own  religion  has  pre- 
vented most  Englishmen  from  realising  what  they  meant 
to  the  Hebrews. 

They  were  at  once  "sacred''  and  "secular."  They  as- 
sumed in  every  paragraph  the  existence  of  God;  but  He 
was  a  God  who  stood  in  direct,  constant,  and  immediate 
relation  to  the  life  of  the  Nation :  "the  God  of  thy  fathers," 
"the  Lord  thy  God  which  brought  thee  out  of  the  house 
of  bondage/'  the  God  who  dwelt  in  the  midst  of  Israel. 
Yet — not  in  spite  of  this,  but  because  of  it — the  Hebrew 
writers  hold,  as  strongly  as  any  modern  secularist,  that 
"the  affairs  of  this  life  and  of  this  world  demand,  and 
will  repay,  our  utmost  care  and  attention."  So  complete- 
ly free  from  any  trace  of  "other-wordliness"  is  the  He- 
brew Torah,  that  a  good  bishop  once  deduced  an  argu- 
ment in  favour  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Pentateuch  from 
the  fact  that  it  contains  no  reference  to  a  life  after  death. 
The  future  life  to  which  the  Law  points  as  the  result 
and  the  reward  of  right-doing  is  the  ideal  life  of  a  free 
and  industrious  Commonwealth,  in  which  every  citizen, 
secure  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  produce  of  his  labour,  sur- 
rounded by  stalwart  sons  and  comely  daughters,  sits  un- 
der his  own  vine  and  his  own  fig  tree,  none  daring  to  make 
him  afraid  "in  the  land  which  the  Lord  thy  God  hath 
given  thee." 

The  Law  contained  not  only  the  elaborate  ritual  of 
the  sacrifices^  and  the  liturgy^  of  the  Jewish  religion, 
but  the  biographies  of  their  national  heroes,  and  the  his- 
tory of  the  Nation  itself.  The  primitive  science  of  the 
infant  Commonwealth  lay  in  it  side  by  side  with  the  lays 
of  their  minstrels  and  an  outline  of  civil  and  criminal  law. 
The  same  collection  of  documents  which  told  them  how 
the  voice  of  God  called  upon  Moses  from  the  burning 

1.  See,  especially,  Lev.  i.-vii. 

2.  Or  rather  some  fragments  of  liturgical  forms,  such  as  Deut.  xx.  8,  4, 
xxi,  7,  8  (and,  possibly,  xxvii.  14-26,  xxviii.);  Num.  vi.  22-26,  x.  35,  3«. 
In  later  times  it  became  the  duty  of  every  pious  Jew  to  recite  the  Shemo 
(Deut.  vi.  4-9  and  xi.  13-21;  with  Num.  xv.  37-41)  every  morning  and  even- 
ing. Our  Lord  quoted  the  opening  words  of  the  Shema  in  reply  to  the  Phari- 
sees' question,  "Which  is  the  great  commandment  of  the  Law?"  (Matt,  xxii 
37;  Mark  xii.  29,  30). 

67 


Lush  to  organize  a  general  strike  against  the  Egyptian 
taskmasters,  claimed  also  that  the  skill  of  the  handicrafts- 
man, no  less  than  the  wisdom  of  the  legislator,  was  due 
to  Divine  inspiration.^  If  the  Law  regulated  with  min- 
ute care  the  vestments  of  the  high-priests,  it  was  no  less 
careful  of  the  foods  of  the  people.^  It  prescribed  in  de- 
tail the  lavish  ornaments  of  the  Tabernacle,  the  outward 
symbol  of  national  unity ,^  but  it  also  told  the  citizen  how 
to  keep  his  person,  his  clothing,  and  his  house  clean  and 
healthy.^  It  insisted  upon  man's  duty  to  God,  but  no 
less  upon  man's  duty  to  his  fellows.  With  a  magnificent 
impartiality  it  denounced  a  curse  upon  the  idolater,  who 
rebelled  against  the  majesty  of  the  Most  High,  and  upon 
the  remover  of  the  landmark,  who  invaded  the  equal  right 
of  his  neighbour.  The  "statutes  and  judgment  of  Moses" 
were  the  Acts  of  Parliament  and  the  case-law  of  the 
Hebrew  Commonwealth.  Whole  chapters  in  Numbers 
and  Joshua  are  filled  with  dry  lists  of  names,  which  were 
once  full  of  the  same  kind  of  interest  and  significance  to 
the  Hebrew  reader  as  Doomsday  Book  or  the  Census  re- 
turns or  Mr.  Lloyd-George's  Land  Valuation  have  to 
students  of  English  social  history. 

To  the  Hebrew,  therefore,  the  study  of  "all  the  words 
of  this  Law,"  enjoined  in  every  seventh  year,  and  made 
possible  by  the  just  land  system  which  the  sabbatical  in- 
stitutions safeguarded,  was,  for  his  time  and  place,  a 
liberal  education.  To  place  within  the  reach  of  the  Eng- 
lish worker,  once  in  every  seven  years,  a  year's  course  at 

1.  Ex.  xxviii.  3  (tailors),  xxxi.  1-6  (masons,  metal-workers,  etc.), 
Kxxv.  30-35,  xxxvi.  1-4. 

2.  Gen.  ix.  4;  Lev.  vii.  17,  19,  26,  xi.  1-47,  xvii.  10-16,  xix.  6,  26,  xxii.  8; 
Deut.  xii.  16,  xiv.  3-21. 

3.  Ex.  xxxvi.-xxxviii. 

4.  Uncleanness  was  a  form  of  sin.  Driver  ("Law  in  the  O.  T.,"  in 
Hastings*  Diet,  of  the  Bible,  iii.  72»)  says  that  in  Lev.  xiv.  49,  52;  Num.  xix. 
12,  13,  19,  20,  "the  Hebr.  for  cleanse,  purify  is  properly  to  'free  from  sin.*  ** 
Dr.  Adler,  the  late  Chief  Rabbi,  pointed  out,  a  few  years  ago,  in  a  paper  read 
before  the  Church  of  England  Sanitary  Association  at  the  Church  House, 
Westminster,  and  reported  in  the  Jewish  Chronicle,  that  in  one  single  chapter 
(Lev.  XV.)  the  phrase  "he  shall  wash  his  clothes  and  bathe  himself  in  water" 
occurs  no  less  than  ten  times  (cp.  Heb.  x.  22).  It  is  a  characteristically  He- 
brew idea  that  the  camp  is  to  be  kept  free  from  contagious  diseases  because 
God  dwells  in  the  midst  thereof  (Num.  v.  3).  See  also  Ex.  xxx.  17-21,  xl.  12, 
80-32.  Sanitary  bve-laws  for  camp  (Lev.  iv.  11,  12,  21,  vi.  11;  Deut.  xxiii. 
12-14). 

68 


a  university  in  science  and  law  and  literature  and  theology,, 
would  be  something  like  the  modern  equivalent  for  one 
of  the  advantages  which  the  sabbath  year  offered  to  the 
ancient  Hebrew.^ 

1.  In  a  remarkable  passage  (Against  Apion,  ii.  168  ff.),  Josephus  claim* 
that,  while  the  best  knowledge  of  olden  times  was  usually  treated  as  a  secret 
and  confined  to  the  few,  it  was  the  glory  of  Moses  that  he  "made  it  current 
coin." 


69 


CHAPTER  VI 
COMPENSATION 

"Restore,  I  pray  you,  even  this  day,  their  lands,  their  vine- 
yards, their  oliveyards,  and  their  houses.  .  .  .  Then  said  they, 
We  will  restore  them,  and  will  require  nothing  of  them." — Neh. 
v.  11,  12. 

"If  I  have  wrongfully  exacted  aught  of  any  man,  I  restore 
fourfold."— Luke  xix.  8  [R.V.]. 

§  1.  One  tribe  out  of  all  the  tribes  of  Israel  was  set 
aside  for  the  performance  of  important  public  functions. 
According  to  the  Theocratic  constitution  of  the  Hebrew 
Commonwealth,  the  men  of  the  tribe  of  Levi  formed  the 
Civil  Service  of  the  unseen  King  of  Israel.  In  order 
to  set  them  free  for  the  performance  of  their  duties,  they 
were  exempted  from  service  in  the  citizen  army,^  in  which 
all  the  capable  males  of  all  the  other  tribes  were  liable 
to  serve  "from  twenty  years  old  and  upwards,  all  that 
are  able  to  go  forth  to  war  in  Israel.'' 

They  were  the  servants  of  the  Lord,  and  therefore  of 
the  Lord's  people.  Their  duties  are  set  forth  with  great 
minuteness.  They  chiefly  centred  round  the  one  great 
public  building  of  the  nation,  the  dwelling-place  of  the 
Most  High,  the  seat  of  the  national  worship,  the  symbol 
of  the  national  unity,  the  central  place  of  assembly^  for 
the  people. 

The  Levites  were  solemnly  set  apart  for  their  work,^ 
to  which  the  prime  of  their  lives  was  devoted.    Their  term 

1.  Num.  i.  2,  3,  47-53,  iii.  5  ff.,  iv.,  viii.  5  ff. 

2.  A,  v.,  "tabernacle  of  the  congregation";  R.  V.,  **tent  of  meeting" 
(cp.  the  two  versions  at  Lev.  i.  1,  and  elsewhere).  In  later  times,  replaced 
by  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem. 

3.  Num.  viii. 

70 


of  full  service  was  from  thirty  to  fifty  years  of  age,  ap- 
parently after  a  training  of  five  years;  and,  when  their 
time  had  expired,  lighter  duties  were  found  for  them.^ 
They  were  also  the  official  preachers  of  the  Law,  and  the 
custodians  of  the  official  copy  of  it.^  Those  members  of 
the  tribe  of  Levi  who  claimed  descent  from  Aaron  formed, 
within  the  tribe,  a  special  order  with  special  functions — 
the  priests.  They  were  not  only  the  national  clergy — 
sacrificing,  absolving,  and  blessing —  but  also  the  teach- 
ers^ of  religion  and  law,  administrators  of  justice,^  the 
medical  officers  of  health  and  sanitary  inspectors,  charged 
with  the  duties  of  inspecting,  isolating,  and  (after  re- 
covery) disinfecting  persons  suffering  from  certain  con- 
tagious diseases,^  of  disinfecting  unclean  garments  and 
bedding,  of  inspecting,  cleansing,  or,  if  need  be,  demolish- 
ing infected  dwellings  f  and  so  on.  This  mixture  of 
"sacred"  and  "secular"  functions  is  characteristic  of  a 
theory  of  government  which,  recognising  no  king  but  God, 
could  draw  no  hard-and-fast  line  between  the  service  of 
God  and  the  service  of  humanity. 

§  2.  If  the  Levites  were  to  give  their  whole  time  and 
attention  to  the  important  public  duties  which  have  been 
hinted  at  above,  it  was  clearly  necessary  that  they  should 
be  set  free  from  the  necessity  of  earning  their  livelihood 
by  ordinary  agricultural  labour,  and  that  some  other  pro- 
vision must  be  made  for  them.  In  order,  therefore,  that 
the  ministrations  of  religion  and  the  means  of  instruction 
might  be  brought  within  the  reach  of  all  the  citizens,  the 

1.  Num.  iv.  3,  23,  etc.,  viii.  24-26;  cp.  Ezra  iii.  8. 

2.  Deut.  xxvii.  14,  xxxi.  25,  26.    On  the  Levites  in  the  time  of  David,  see 

1  Chron.  xxiii, 

3.  Lev.  X.  11;  Deut.  xxxi.  9-13;  xxxiii,  10;  cp.  2  Chron.  xv.  3;  Mai.  ii.  7. 

4.  Deut.  xvii.  8-13,  xxi.  5.  In  the  time  of  David,  "six  thousand  were 
officers  and  judges"  (1  Chron.  xxiii.  4) ;  cp.  Jehosaphat's  high  court  of  appeal 
(2  Chron.  xix.  8-10);  Ezek.  xliv.  24;  Ecclus.  xlv.  17. 

5.  Especially  diseases  of  the  skin,  of  which  the  most  dreadful  was  leprosy. 
On   the   isolation   of   a  leprous  king,    and   the   appointment   of  a   regent,   sec 

2  Kings  XV.  5;  2  Chron.  xxvi.  21.  The  tendency  to  this  form  of  disease  may 
have  been  a  legacy  from  the  period  of  Egyptian  bondage  (Deut.  vii.  15). 
Manetho  has  a  curious  story,  quoted  and  criticised  by  Josephus,  of  eighty 
thousand  leprous  Egyptians,  who  were  put  to  work  in  the  quarries  on  the  east 
side  of  the  Nile,  and  who,  re^olting  under  the  leadership  of  a  priest  of 
Heliopolis  named  Osarsiph  or  Moses,  made  a  league  with  the  "shepherds"  of 
the  Exodus,  now  settled  at  Jerusalem  (Against  Apion,  i.  283  ff.). 

6.  Lev.  xiii.,  xiv.,  xv. 

71 


Levites  were  provided  with  residences  in  forty-eight 
cities,  assigned  specially  to  them  ''with  the  suburbs^ 
thereof" — a  certain  amount  of  surrounding  meadow-land^ 
for  the  pasturage  of  their  cattle.  These  cities  were  to  be 
taken  in  fair  proportion  from  all  the  tribes.^  Thirteen 
of  them  were  allotted  to  the  priests.^  Six  were  appointed 
as  "cities  of  refuge,'*  to  which  "the  slayer  that  killeth  un- 
awares and  unwittingly"  might  flee  in  order  to  escape 
lynching  and  to  secure  a  fair  trial. ^ 

But  it  is  plain  that  the  provision  of  an  official  residence 
fell  far  short  of  what  the  Levite  would  have  received 
had  he  been  born  into  any  other  tribe.  For  the  Levites 
had  no  part  in  the  division  of  the  land,  although  they 
obviously  had  the  same  "right  to  the  use  of  the  earth" 
as  the  other  tribes.  The  families  of  eleven  tribes  divided 
among  them  land  in  which  the  families  of  twelve  tribes 
had  rights  to  equal  shares.  The  excluded  tribe  was  clear- 
ly entitled  to  compensation  for  the  loss  of  rights  of  which, 
for  reasons  of  public  policy,  it  had  been  deprived.  This 
compensation  was  given  by  means  of  the  tithe.  The 
tribes  who  had  divided  among  themselves  the  Levites' 
share  of  the  land,  as  well  as  their  own,  paid  to  the  Levites 
one-tenth  of  the  produce  of  the  land,^  and  the  Levites, 
in  their  turn,  paid  one-tenth  of  this  tithe — "a  tithe  of  the 
tithe" — to  the  Aaronic  priesthood.*^ 

§  3.  This  is,  beyond  doubt,  the  meaning  and  intention 
of  the  tithe.®    It  was  not  payment  for  services  rendered 

1.  R.  V.  m.  gives  "pasture-land." 

2.  Num.  XXXV.  1-5;  Josh.  xiv.  4,  xxi. ;  1  Chron.  vi.  54-81. 

3.  Num.  XXXV.  8. 

4.  Tosh.  xxi.  13-19. 

5.  Ex.  xxi.  13;  Num.  xxxv.  6,  9-34;  Deut.  iv.  41-43,  xix.  1-13.  Josh. 
XX.  But  not  even  the  taking  of  sanctuary  at  an  altar  could  save  the  deliberate 
murderer  from  punishment  (Ex.  xxi.  14';  1  Kings  ii.  28-34;  cp.  i.  50).  An 
additional  protection  from  the  prevailing"  Eastern  custom  of  blood-revenge 
was  the  requirement  of  two  witnesses  for  a  conviction  for  murder  (Num. 
xxxv.  30;  Deut.  xix.  15).     See  note  8  on  p.  34, 

6.  Num.  xviii.  21-24;  Lev.  xxvii.  32,  33;  2  Chron.  xxxi.  5,  6;  Neh.  x.  37, 
xii.  44,  xiii.  5,  12.  Nehemiah  (xiii.  10)  relates  that,  at  a  time  when  the  tithes 
were  not  paid,  the  Levites  had  to  support  themselves  by  agricultural  work. 

7.  Num.  xviii.  25-32;  Neh.  x.  38. 

8.  ^  A  second  "tithe"  seems  to  have  been  mainly  a  provision  for  holidays — 
a  setting-aside  of  10  per  cent,  of  the  annual  produce  of  the  land  against  the 
rejoicings  and  hospitalities  which  accompanied  the  great  national  festivals 
(Deut.  xii.  6,  17;  Neh.  viii.  10,  12),  and  may  be  compared  v.ith  the  saving- 

72 


to  the  community.  It  was  not  a  mere  tax  upon  the  la- 
bour of  the  people  for  the  maintenance  of  ministers  of  re- 
ligion. It  was  compensation  for  land-rights.  For  the 
scriptural,  as  well  as  the  common-sense,  view  is  that,  if 
there  is  to  be  any  talk  of  ''compensation"  in  connection 
with  the  land  question,  the  compensation  is  due  to  those 
who  have  been  deprived  of  their  rights  in  the  land,  and 
not  to  those  who,  having  set  back  their  neighbour's  land- 
mark to  their  own  advantage,  are  afterwards  compelled 
to  obey  the  law  of  equal  rights.  It  is  to  the  landless  and 
disinherited,  and  not  to  the  landlord,  that  the  Bible  awards 
compensation.  Emerson  answered  the  demand  for  com- 
pensation to  slave-''owners"  in  the  same  spirit — 

"Pay  ransom  to  the  owner, 
And  fill  the  bag  to  the  brim. 
Who  is  the  owner?    The  slave  is  the  owner, 
And  ever  was.    Pay  him. "^ 

The  language  of  the  Pentateuch  proves  that  this  is  no 
merely  fanciful  interpretation.  Note,  for  instance,  the 
use  of  the  word  "inheritance"  in  the  following  quota- 
tions : — 

"Unto  these   [the  eleven  tribes]  the  land  shall  be  divided 
for  an  inheritance"  (Num.  xxvi.  53). 

for-holidays-clubs  common  today  in  some  parts  of  England,  especially  in  Lan- 
cashire. The  produce  could  be  turned  into  money  in  the  country  for  conven- 
ience of  carriage  to  Jerusalem  (Deut.  xiv.  22-27),  and  the  money  there  spent 
for  its  appointed  purposes.  Authorities  are  divided  on  the  question  whether 
the  "tithe"  mentioned  in  Deut.  xiv.  28,  29,  xxvi.  12  ff.,  was  an  extra  tithe 
in  every  third  year — the  so-called  **poor-tithe" — or  a  special  provision  for  the 
use  of  the  tithe  in  every  third  year.  The  Rabbis  incline  to  the  former  opinion. 
Cp.  the  following:  ''Besides  these  two  tithes,  which  I  have  already  said  you 
are  to  pay  every  year,  the  one  for  the  Levites,  the  other  for  the  festivals;  you 
are  to  bring  every  third  year  a  third  tithe  to  be  distributed  to  those  that  want; 
to  women  also  that  are  widows;  and  to  children  that  are  ophans"  (Jos., 
Antiq.,  iv.  8.  240) ;  and  "The  first  tenth  of  all  increase  I  gave  to  the  sons  of 
Aaron,  who  ministered  at  Jerusalem:  another  tenth  part  I  sold  away,  and 
went,  and  spent  it  every  year  at  Jerusalem;  and  the  third  I  gave  unto  them  to 
whom  it  was  meet  .  .  .  because  I  was  left  an  orphan  by  my  father** 
(Tob.  i.  7,  8).     See  Amos  iv.  4. 

1.  From  the  "Boston  Hymn,"  read  in  the  Music  Hall,  Boston,  January  1, 
1863.  There  is  in  the  Talmud  an  interesting  story  of  Gebiah  ben  Pesisah, 
"a  wise  man."  "Then  came  the  Egyptians,  saying,  *God  gave  the  Israelites 
favour  in  the  eyes  of  the  Egyptians,  and  they  lent  them  gold  and  silver.'  Now. 
return  us  the  gold  and  silver  which  our  ancestors  lent  ye."  Gebiah  appeared 
for  the  sages  of  Israel.  "Four  hundred  and  thirty  years,*'  said  he,  "did  the 
children  of  Israel  dwell  in  Egypt.  Come,  now,  pay  us  the  wages  of  six  hun- 
dred thousand  men  who  worked  for  ye  for  naught,  and  we  will  return  the  gold 
and  silver." 

73 


"There  was  no  inheritance  [in  the  land]  given  them  [the 
Levites]  among  the  children  of  Israel"  (Num.  xxvi.  62;  cp. 
Deut.  X.  9,  xii.  12,  xviii.  1,  2;  Josh.  xiv.  3,  4). 

"Thou  [Aaron]  shalt  have  no  inheritance  in  their  land. 
...  I  have  given  the  children  of  Levi  all  the  tenth  in  Israel 
for  an  inheritance,  for  their  service  which  they  serve,  even 
the  service  of  the  Tabernacle  of  the  congregation.  .  .  .  But  the 
tithes  of  the  children  of  Israel  ...  I  have  given  to  the  Levites 
to  inherit:  therefore  I  have  said  unto  them,  Among  the  chil- 
dren of  Israel  they  shall  have  no  inheritance"  (Num.  xviii. 
20-24).! 

The  fact  that  the  Levites  were  (among  other  things) 
ministers  of  reHgion  has  caused  the  true  meaning  of 
this  arrangement  to  be  misunderstood.  It  was  a  method 
of  maintaining  the  principle  of  equal  rights  in  land,  even 
in  the  face  of  an  unequal  division  of  the  land  itself. 
It  was,  exactly  in  principle  and  roughly  in  practice,  the 
same  kind  of  equalisation  of  land-rights  as  we  seek  now- 
adays to  bring  about  by  the  taxation  of  land  values. 

After  the  usual  Hebrew  fashion,  the  just  arrangement, 
once  made,  was  protected  by  a  religious  sanction.  The 
"inheritance''  of  the  Simeonite  or  Ephraimite  was  pro- 
tected by  the  curse  upon  the  landmark  remover.  The 
"inheritance"  of  the  Levite  was  protected  by  "devoting" 
it  to  the  Lord.^  The  Levite's  house — the  site  of  which 
was  the  one  firm  foothold  he  had  upon  God's  earth — was 
subject  to  the  law  of  Jubilee,  and  could  not  be  perman- 
ently alienated  f  nor  could  the  common  pasture  of  the 
"suburb"  of  his  city;  though  ordinary  houses  in  walled 
towns  (probably  mostly  occupied  by  "strangers")  could 
be  bought  and  sold  outright,^  subject  to  a  right  of  redemp- 
tion within  one  full  year.^ 

§  4.     The  Hebrew  laws  applied  to  the  special  case  of 

1.  cp.  Ezek.  xliv.  28:  "It  shall  be  unto  them  for  an  inheritance:  I  am 
their  inheritance:  and  ye  shall  give  them  no  possession  in  Israel:  I  am  their 
possession";  Ecclus.  xlv.  20-22. 

2.  Lev.  xxvii.  30-33 ;  cp.  28.     See  Gen.  xxviii.  22 ;  1  Sam.  ii.  12-17. 
Lev.  XXV.  32-34. 

4.  Lev.  XXV.  29,  80. 

5.  The  actual  salaries  of  the  priests  and  Levites  for  services  rendered 
were  paid  partly  in  money,  e.  g.  for  the  redemption  of  the  firstborn  (Num. 
xviii.  14-19;  cp.  iii.  12-13,  44),  and  partly  in  perquisites  (see  the  law  of  the 
sacrifices.  Lev.  i.-vii.;  "the  priest's  due,"  Deut.  xviii.  3;  and  elsewhere). 

74 


rights  in  land  the  spirit  of  those  general  maxims  of  Eng- 
lish law  which  declare  that  no  man  ought  to  be  enriched 
by  another  man's  loss,  or  to  obtain  an  advantage  by  his 
own  wrong.i  To  "set  back"  one's  neighbour's  landmark 
was  a  crime  against  God,  Who  had  given  him  an  equal 
right  in  the  land,  and  against  the  neighbour,  who  was  be- 
ing robbed  of  his  just  rights;  a  summa  injuria  against 
which  the  Law  hurled  a  curse  and  the  prophets  denounced 
a  Woe !  Neither  Lawgiver  nor  Prophet  would  have  toler- 
ated for  a  moment  the  notion  that  this  invasion  of  a 
fundamental  human  right  could  only  be  rectified  by 
awarding  compensation  to  the  invader.  It  was  not  in 
accordance  with  the  ethical  principles  of  Hebrew  law  that 
a  man  should  be  compensated  when  he  ceased  to  profit 
by  his  own  wrong  at  the  expense  of  his  fellow-citizen's 
rights.  The  housebreaker,  the  cattle-thief,  the  trespasser 
on  another  man's  pasture,  had  to  make,  at  the  very  least, 
full  restitution  to  the  man  upon  whom  he  had  inflicted 
loss.^  Why  should  this  principle  cease  to  apply,  or  be 
actually  reversed,  when  it  was  a  question  of  depriving 
another  of  the  right  upon  which  his  living  and  his  Hberty 
were  dependent?  It  is  only  in  modern  England,  aftei 
centuries  of  landlord  usurpation,  that  such  a  perversion 
of  ethical  principle  can  be  advocated.  There  is  no  trace 
of  such  a  view  in  the  O.  T. 

Nor  in  the  New.  We  read  that  Zacchaeus  was  ''chief 
among  the  puhlicani'' — a  class  of  men  who  enriched  them- 
selves by  unjust  extortion  (Luke  iii.  12,  13)  under  a 
vicious  method  of  indirect  taxation;  "and  he  was  rich." 
He  came  under  the  influence  of  Jesus.  Then,  immed- 
iately— 

"Zacchaeus  stood,  and  said  unto  the  Lord,  Behold,  Lord, 
the  half  of  my  goods  I  give  to  the  poor;  and  if  I  have  wrong- 
fully exacted  aught  of  any  man,  I  restore  fourfold.  And 
Jesus  said  unto  him,  Today  is  salvation  come  to  this  house" 
(Luke  xix.  1-10,   R.V.). 

1.  Nemo  debet  locupletari  alienfl  jactura  (cited  by  Bovill,  C.  J.).  Nullus 
commodum  capere  potest  de  injuria  suft  propria.  Coke,  Littleton,  148.  See 
Wharton,  Law  Lexicon  (9th  edit.),  pp.  504,  521. 

2.  Ex.  xxii.  1-15. 

75 


His  first  Christian  impulse  was  to  make  direct  and  gen- 
erous restitution  to  those  whom  he  knew  he  had  wronged 
personally,  and  to  make  what  general  restitution  he 
could  to  the  unknown  victims  of  the  system  by  which  he 
has  unjustly  become  rich.  Apparently  it  never  occurred 
to  this  unsophisticated  convert  that  "the  poor''  ought 
rather  to  "compensate"  him  for  leaving  off  his  profitable 
but  wrongful  exactions. 

§  5.  After  the  return  from  the  Exile,  the  great  leader 
of  the  restored  Israelites,  Nehemiah,  had  to  face  a  con- 
dition not  unlike  that  of  today.  Landlordism  had  grown 
up.  The  people  were  in  bondage,  racked  with  usury,  tax- 
ed on  their  daily  food.  It  is  refreshing  to  contrast  the 
action  of  Nehemiah  with  the  schemes  of  compensation  to 
landlords  which  are  advocated  by  some  reformers  today 
because  of  the  supposed  dishonesty  of  what  they  call 
"confiscation" — i.e,  of  the  restoration  to  the  people  of 
their  lost  rights  in  the  land,  by  putting  into  the  fiscus, 
or  public  treasury,  the  values  which  the  public  creates. 

Before  a  mass  meeting  of  the  landless  and  disin- 
herited,^ Nehemiah  addressed  the  "nobles  and  the  rulers" 
who  had  profited  by  social  injustice.  He  "set  a  great 
assembly  against  them,"  and  called  upon  them  to  make 
immediate  restitution.  No  offer  of  "compensation"  is 
made  on  the  one  side,  no  demand  for  it  on  the  other. 

What  would  be  the  modern  parallel  to  this?  Is  it 
quite  mad  to  picture,  say,  an  English  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, Bible  in  hand;  like  Nehemiah,  "very  angry," 
because  he  has  heard  the  cry  of  the  victims  of  injustice ; 
setting  a  "great  assembly"  of  landless  citizens  against  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  enforcing  a  popular  demand  for  the 
restoration  to  the  people  of  their  God-given  rights  in  the 
land,  without  any  compensation,  except  compensation  to 
the  plundered  people  for  the  exactions  of  indirect  tax- 
ation? Mad  enough,  no  doubt;  for  modern  priests  and 
prophets  are  not  always  built  after  Biblical  models. 

1.     See  Appendix  C. 

76 


CHAPTER  VII 
JUSTICE 

"Justice,  justice  shalt  thou  follow." — Deut.  xvi.  20    [R.V.m.] 

"Thou  hast  said  that  for  our  sakes  Thou  madest  this  world. 
...  If  the  world  now  be  made  for  our  sakes,  why  do  we  not 
possess  for  an  inheritance  our  world?  How  long  shall  this 
endure?"— 2  Esd.  vi.  55,  59  [R.V.]. 

"One  came  to  Hillel  to  be  converted,  provided  that  he  could 
be  taught  the  whole  Torah  [Law]  whilst  he  stood  on  one  foot. 
Hillel  said :  What  is  hateful  to  thyself  do  not  to  thy  fellow : 
this  is  the  whole  Torah;  and  the  rest  is  commentary;  go  study." 
— The  Talmud. 

"These  that  have  turned  the  world  upside  down  are  come 
hither  also." — Acts  xvii.  6. 

§  1.  Every  Easter  Day  the  Church  keeps  the  com- 
memoration of  her  Lord's  Victory  over  Death,  of  which 
the  deliverance  from  Egypt  has  always  been  held  to  be  a 
type.  In  her  appointed  services  for  the  day  she  draws 
the  moral  of  the  stupendous  miracle  of  the  Resurrection. 
The  average  sensual  man  would  probably  expect  it  to 
be,  on  such  an  occasion,  something  unusually  transcen- 
dental. Yet  in  the  most  solemn  Service  of  the  day,  the 
Gospel  merely  tells  us  the  story  of  the  empty  tomb  in 
the  simple  language  of  the  Beloved  Disciple,  while  the 
Collect  asks  that  we  may  be  helped  to  bring  to  good 
effect  the  good  desires  which  God  has  put  into  our  minds, 
and  the  Epistle  exhorts  us,  because  Christ  is  risen,  and 
we  are  risen  with  Him,  to  lead  clean  and  wholesome  lives 
and  to  avoid  "covetousness,  which  is  idolatry."  To  some 
this  may  seem  a  lame  and  impotent  conclusion,  not  far 
removed  from  bathos.  Yet  St.  Paul,  who  wound  up 
some  of  his  deepest  theological  discussions  with  the 
tritest  moral  advice  about  the  duties  of  men  one  toward 

77 


another  in  their  ordinary  family  and  social  relations, 
would  have  quite  well  understood  it  all.  The  Epistle  is, 
in  fact,  selected  from  his  writings.^ 

§  2.  Some  foreshadowing  of  this  way  of  looking  at 
things  may  be  frequently  found  in  the  O.  T.  writers. 
Note,  for  instance,  the  implied  argument  in  the  following 
passages : — 

"Thou  shalt  not  have  in  thy  bag  divers  weights,  a  great 
and  a  small.  Thou  shalt  not  have  in  thine  house  divers 
measures,  a  great  and  a  small.  But  thou  shalt  have  a  per- 
fect and  just  weight,  a  perfect  and  just  measure  shalt  thou 
have :  that  thy  days  may  be  lengthened  in  the  land  which  the 
Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee.  For  all  that  do  such  things,  and 
all  that  do  unrighteously,  are  an  abomination  unto  the  Lord 
thy  God"   (Deut.  xxv.  13-16). 

"Ye  shall  do  no  unrighteousness  in  judgment:  thou  shalt 
not  respect  the  person  of  the  poor,  nor  honour  the  person  of 
the  mighty:  but  in  righteousness  shalt  thou  judge  thy  neigh- 
bour. ...  Ye  shall  do  no  unrighteousness  in  judgment,  in 
meteyard,  in  weight,  or  in  measure.  Just  balances,  just 
weights,  a  just  ephah,  and  a  just  hin,  shall  ye  have:  I  am  the 
Lord  your  God,  which  brought  you  ought  of  the  land  of 
Egypt.  Therefore  shall  ye  observe  all  My  statutes,  and  all 
My  judgments,  and  do  them :  I  am  the  Lord"  (Lev.  xix. 
15,  35-37). 2 

So,  one  of  the  morals  of  the  epoch-making  deliverance 
from  Egypt^  is,  that  a  pound  must  not  weigh  less  than 
sixteen  ounces,  and  that  a  bushel  measure  must  always 
be  big  enough  to  hold  a  bushel ;  and  so  important  is  this 
elementary  sort  of  honesty,  that  the  national  existence 
depends  upon  the  faithful  observance  of  it. 

§  3.     The  Hebrew  words^  usually  translated   "right- 

1.  Col.  iii.,  1-6,  which  see. 

2.  Cp.  Ezek.  xlv.  10-12;  Prov.  xi.  1,  xvi.  11,  xx.  10;  Hos.  xii.  6,  7; 
Amos  viii,  4-6;  Mic.  vi.  10,  11. 

3.  It  is  also  quoted  as  the  reason  for  not  charging  interest  to  a  brother 
Israelite  (Lev.  xxv.  35-38),  and  for  not  oppressing  or  defrauding  the 
"stranger"  or  the  unfortunate  (Ex.  xxii.  21,  xxiii.  9;  Lev.  xix.  34;  Deut. 
xxiv.  14,  15,  17,  18,  and  see  19-22),  etc.  "The  care  taken  by  Israelite  law 
to  protect  strangers  finds  no  parallel  in  Babylonia"  (S.  A.  Cook,  The  Lazvs  of 
Moses  and  the  Code  of  Hammurabi,  p.  276). 

4.  Za^ak  and  its  derivatives  aedek,  zaddik,  etc.  "The  use  of  'righte9us' 
as  a  translation  of  yashar  (r^iupright)  is  less  frequent.  .  .  .  The  original 
implications  of  the  root  zadak  are  involved  in  doubt.    To  be  'hard,'  'even'  and 

78 


eous"  and  ''righteousness,"  but  sometimes  also  trans- 
lated ''jusf'  and  "justice/'^  are  represented  in  the  Sep- 
tuagint  by  the  Greek  words,  sUaios  and  SiKaicavvrj  [in 
the  Vulgate,  Justus  and  justitia].  They  mean  primarily 
"just"  and  ''justice,''  and  much  of  the  O.  T.  would  have  a 
clearer  meaning  to  us  if  they  were  usually  so  rendered, 
especially  in  the  older  parts  of  the  O.  T.  writings,  where 
their  significance  is  purely  ethical.  Consider,  for  instance, 
the  definition  of  "righteousness"  implied  by  Jeremiah's 
use  of  the  word — 

"Thus  saith  the  Lord :  Execute  ye  judgment  and  right- 
eousness [justice],  and  deliver  the  spoiled  out  of  the  hand 
of  the  oppressor :  and  do  no  wrong,  do  no  violence  to  the 
stranger,  the  fatherless,  nor  the  widow,  neither  shed  innocent 
blood  in  this  place.  .  .  .  Woe  unto  him^  that  buildeth  his 
house  by  unrighteousness,  and  his  chambers  by  wrong  ;3  that 
useth  his  neighbour's  service  without  wages,  and  giveth  him 
not  for  his  work;  that  saith,  I  will  build  me  a  wide  house  and 
large  chambers,  and  cutteth  him  out  windows ;  and  it  is  cieled** 
with  cedar,  and  painted  with  vermilion.  Shalt  thou  reign, 
because  thou  closest^  thyself  in  cedar?  did  not  thy  father  eai 
and  drink,  and  do  judgment  and  justice,  and  then  it  was 
well  with  him?  He  judged  the  cause  of  the  poor  and  needy; 
then  it  was  well  with  him:  was  not  this  to  know  Me?  saith 
the  Lord.  But  thine  eyes  and  thine  heart  are  not  but  for  thy 
covetousness.^  and  for  to  shed  innocent  blood,  and  for  op- 
pression, and  for  violence,  to  do  it"     (Jer.  xxii.  3,13-17). 

§  4.     The  conception  of  JUSTICE  as  the  foundation 

'straight'  (said  of  roads,  for  instance)  has  been  suggested  as  the  primitive 
physical  idea.  More  acceptable  is  the  explanation  that  the  root  notion  conveyed 
is  that  a  thing,  man,  or  even  God,  is  what  it,  or  he,  should  be,  that  is, 
'normal,'  'fit.'  ...  In  its  earliest  use  among  Hebrews  the  term  'righteous- 
ness' seems  to  have  had  a  moral  intention"  (Jewish  Encyclopccdia,  x.  420). 
The  Hebrew  word  means  "conformity  to  a  recognised  norm  or  standard" 
{Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  iv.  4102).  So  used  of  a  just  weight  or  measure 
(Deut.  XXV.  15),  of  a  just  king  or  judge  (Lev.  xix.  15),  etc. 

1.  In  Prov.  X.  6,  7,  where  the  "just"  is  contrasted  with  the  "wicked,"  the 
R.  V,.  differing  from  A.  V.,  uses  both  "righteous"  (verse  6)  and  "just"  (7). 
In  Isa.  V.  7;  Prov.  iii.  31,  32,  the  contrast  is  between  the  "just"  and  the 
"oppressor";  "oppression,  violence  and  robbery"  (Amos  iii.  9,  10);  "justice" 
opposed  to  spoliatory  taxation  (Ezek.  xlv.  9).  "Judgment  .  .  .  equity  .  .  . 
iniquity"  (Mic.  iii.  9,  10). 

2.  Jehoiakirn,  King  of  Judah  (cp.  verse  18  and  2  Kings  xxiv.  4). 

3.  R.  v.,  injustice. 

4.  In  the  English  of  the  time  of  A.  V.r=:"panelled." 

6.  R.  v.,  strivest  to  excel  in  cedar.  At  a  time  of  national  poverty,  when 
the  nation  was  under  heavy  taxation  to  pay  tribute  to  Egpyt  (2  Kings  xxiii. 
33-35;  2  Chron.  xxxvi.  5),' Jehoiakim  was  building  himself  a  costly  palace  by 
the  forr'^d.  unpaid  labour  of  the  people. 

6.     R.  V.  m.,  dishonest  gain. 

79 


of  all  law,  Divine  and  human,  pervades  all  the  teaching 
of  the  Law  and  the  Prophets. 

God  Himself  is  immovably  just.  "He  is  the  Rock,  His 
work  is  perfect;  for  all  His  ways  are  judgment;  a 
God  of  truth  and  without  iniquity  [in-equity,  injustice]^ 
just  and  right  is  He."^  "The  judgments  of  the  Lord  are 
true  and  righteous  altogether'';  He  "is  righteous  in  all 
His  ways";^  He  judges  truly  and  justly  for  ever.^ 

Because  the  just  Lord  loveth  justice,^  and  delights  in 
it,^  and  honours  the  just,^  He  gives  just  laws  to  His  peo- 
ple. "What  great  nation  is  there,  that  hath  statutes  and 
judgments  so  righteous  as  all  this  law,  which  I  set  be- 
fore you  this  day?""^ 

Because  the  just  God,  the  Judge  of  all  the  world,  judges 
"in  justice,"®  the  Law  must  be  justly  administered.  "He 
that  ruleth  over  men  must  be  just,  ruling  in  the  fear  of 
God.''^  The  earthly  judge  must  '*judge  the  people  with 
just  judgment''  ;^^  must  have  no  respect  of  persons  ;^^  must 
not  take  bribes.^^  A  man  might  only  be  punished  after 
diligent  inquiry,^^  and  on  sufficient  evidence.^^  Punish- 
ment, on  conviction,  was  not  to  be  excessive,  and  must 
be  carried  out  in  the  presence  of  the  judge.^^     Perjury, 

1.  Deut.  xxxii.  4. 

2.  Ps.  xix.  9,  cxix.  7,  62,  106,  160,  164,  cxlv.  17;  Ezra.  ix.  15;  Neh.  ix.  8; 
Isa.  xlv.  21;  Job.  viii.  3,  xxxvii.  23. 

3.  Tob.  iii.  2. 

4.  Ps.  xi.  7.  Vulg.,  quoniam  Justus  Dominus  et  justitias  dilexit  (cp. 
A.  v.). 

6.     Jer.  ix.  24. 

6.  Ps.  xlv.  7. 

7.  Deut.  iv.  8.  "The  Jews  .  .  .  live  by  most  just  laws"  (Artaxerxes 
in  the  Apoc.  Esth.  xvi.  15).  "As  to  the  laws  themselves  .  .  .  they  are 
visible  in  their  own  nature,  and  appear  to  teach  not  impiety,  but  the  truest 
piety  in  the  world  .  .  .  they  are  enemies  to  injustice"  (Jos.,  Against  Apion, 
ii.  291). 

8.  Ps,  ix.  4  (Vulg.,  sedisti  super  thronum  qui  judicas  justitiam),  8, 
Ixvii.  4,  xcvi.  10,  13;  Gen.  xviii.  25. 

9.  2  Sam.  xxiii.  3;  Ps.  Ixxii. 

10.  Deut.  xvi.  18. 

11.  Justice  is  to  be  done  between  Hebrew  and  Hebrew,  between  Hebrew 
and  stranger,  between  small  and  great  (Deut.  i.  16,  17;  Ex.  xxiii.  6;  Lev. 
xix.  15). 

12.  Deut.  xvi.  19;  Amos  v.  12. 

13.  Deut.  xvii.  4. 

14.  Deut.  xvii.  6,  xix.  15. 

15.  Deut.  XXV.  1-3. 

80 


which  poisons  the  well  of  justice,  was  severely  punished.^ 
There  was  provision  for  appeal  to  the  highest  court  in 
difficult  cases.^  ''That  which  is  altogether  just  shalt  thou 
follow,^  that  thou  mayst  live,  and  inherit  the  land  which 
the  Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee." 

§  5.  But  the  Hebrew  conception  of  Justice  was  not 
merely  forensic.  It  was  not  enough  that  the  administra- 
tion of  the  national  law  should  be  just.  Justice  must 
rule  all  social  relations  within  the  Nation.  "Justice  and 
judgment  are  the  habitation  of  Thy  throne:  mercy  and 
truth  shall  go  before  Thy  face.  Blessed  is  the  people 
that  know  the  joyful  sound:  they  shall  walk,  O  Lord,  in 
the  light  of  Thy  countenance."^  Justice  must  rule  in 
Israel,  because  "the  just  Lord  is  in  the  midst  thereof,"^ 
and  "they  that  fear  the  Lord  shall  find  judgment,  and 
shall  kindle  justice  as  a  light"  f  "for  the  ways  of  the 
Lord  are  right  and  the  just  shall  walk  in  them.""^ 

Nor  did  "Justice"  consist  in  the  mere  formal  obser- 
vance of  written  laws  or  of  binding  custom  which  for- 
bade the  invasion  of  the  legal  or  customary  rights  of 
others ;  for  the  Lord  exercises  "loving-kindness"  as  well 
as  "judgment  and  justice  in  the  earth,"  and  His  tender 
mercies  are  over  all  His  works.^  Man  must  be  just 
before  he  is  generous,  because  generosity  cannot  begin 
till  justice  has  been  done:^  he  ought  to  be  both  just  and 
generous.  The  Law  secured  to  him,  under  the  protec- 
tion of  a  curse,  the  equal  right  of  access  to  land,  and 
therewith  the  right  to  the  produce  of  his  own  labour ;  but 
it  made  common  to  all  the  spontaneous  growths  of  the 
sabbatic  year  "that  the  poor  of  thy  people  may  eat,"^® 
and  it  secured  to  the  "stranger,  the  fatherless  and  the 

1.  Deut.  xix.  16-21. 

2.  Deut.  xvii.  8  ff. 

3.  Deut.  xvi.  20.  The  Hebrew  is  very  emphatic.  "Justice,  justice  shalt 
thou  follow"  (see  R.  V.  m.). 

4.  Ps.  Ixxxix.  14,  15;  cp.  Isa.  Iviii.  2;  Hos.  ii.  19. 

5.  Zeph.  iii.  6;  Ps.  Ixxxii.  1-4;  cp.  Phil.  iv.  8;  1  Pet.  i.  17. 

6.  Ecclus.  xxxii.  16;  Prov.  iv.  18. 

7.  Hos.  xiv.  9. 

8.  Ter.  ix.  24;  Ps.  cxlv.  9;  cp.  Hos.  x.  12. 

9.  Luke  xi.  41,  42. 

10.      "That  which  groweth  of  its  own  accord"  (Lev.  xxv.  3  7;  Ex.  xxiii.  11). 

81 


widow"  the  immemorial  right  of  gleaning/  and  to  the 
wayfarer  the  right  to  satisfy  his  hunger  from  the  grow- 
ing crops.^  The  just  man,  enjoying  the  bounteous  pro- 
vision which  God  has  made  for  His  children,  considers 
the  cause  of  the  poor.^  He  should  lend  to  his  brother 
Hebrew  in  misfortune  without  grudging,^  and  without 
interest.^  He  should  be  ready  to  put  himself  to  trouble  in 
order  to  save  his  "brother,''®  or  even  his  "enemy,"'^  from 
the  loss  of  what  justly  belongs  to  him.  Nor  might  he 
build  a  house  or  dig  a  well  without  taking  precautions  to 
protect  others  from  liability  to  accident.^ 

Moreover,  the  Hebrew  conception  of  justice  covered 
also  the  conduct  of  man  towards  his  still  poorer  relations, 
his  humbler  fellow-creatures  of  the  stable  and  the  field. 
"A  righteous  (Vulg.,  Justus)  man  regardeth  the  life  of 
his  beast."^  The  ox  that  tramped  round  the  threshing 
floor  must  not  be  muzzled  in  sight  of  the  heap  of  corn  ;^^ 
a  weaker  and  a  stronger  animal  must  not  be  yoked  togeth- 
er to  the  same  plough. ^^ 

§  6.  Can  we  wonder  that  the  later  Prophets  of  Israel, 
inspired  by  such  ideals  as  these,  looked  forward  to  the 
time  when  they  should  conquer  the  world  of  humanity, 
when  the  kingdom  of  the  Messiah  should  be  established 
in  Zion  on  the  "sure  foundation"  of  Justice  ?^2  Then  the 
Sun  of  Justice  shall  arise  with  healing  in  His  wings,  and 
all  the  inhabitants  of  the  world  will  learn  Justice.^^     So, 

1.  The  corners  of  the  field  not  to  be  reaped  (Lev.  xix.  9,  10,  xxiii.  22) ; 
the  forgotten  sheaf  not  to  be  fetched  (Deut.  xxiv.  19). 

2.  Deut.  xxiii.  24,  25;  Luke  vi.  1. 
8.      Prov.  xxix.  7. 

4.     Deut.  XV.  7-10;  Luke  vi.  34,  35. 

6.  Ex.  xxii.  25;  Lev.  xxv.  35-37;  Deut.  xv.  3,  xxiii.  19,  20.  Cp.  the  law 
about  pawning  (Ex.  xxii.  26;  Deut.  xxiv.  6,  10-13;  and  see  Job  xxii.  6, 
xxiv.  8). 

6.  Deut.  xxii.  1-4;  Lev.  vi.  3,  5. 

7.  Ex.  xxiii.  4,  6.  .  ,.       ,     , 

8.  Ex.  xxi.  33,  34;  Deut.  xxii.  8,  are  among  the  earliest  building  by-laws 
that  have  come  down  to  us. 

9.  Prov.  xii.  10. 

10.'     Deut.  xxv.  4.  ..,.., 

11.  Deut.  xxii.  10.  Note  the  curious  law  about  bird's-nesting  in  the  pre- 
vious verses  (6,  7).  ^  ...  ^ 

12.  Isa.  xxviii.  16,  17,  ix.  7,  xi.  4,  5;  Jer.  xxni.  5,  xxxiii.  15,  16; 
Ps.  Ixxii.  The  Apostles  referred  to  Christ  as  "the  Just  One"  (Acts  in.  14, 
vii.  52,  xxii.  14).  .  ,        ... 

13.  Mai.  iv.  2  (Vulg.,  sol  justitiae);  Isa.  xxvi.  9  (Vulg.,  justtttam  discent 
habitores  orbis). 

82 


through  Justice,  shall  come  Social  peace.  "Behold  a  king 
shall  reign  in  righteousness,  [Vulg.,  in  justitia],  and 
princes  shall  rule  in  judgment.  .  .  .  Then  judgment  shall 
dwell  in  the  wilderness,  and  righteousness  [justitia]  re- 
main in  the  fruitful  field.  And  the  work  of  righteous- 
ness [justitice]  shall  be  peace;  and  the  effect  of  right- 
eousness [cultus  justitice]  quietness  and  assurance 
[securitas]  for  ever."^ 

§  7.  Yet  there  was  a  certain  element  of  narrowness 
which  tended  to  limit  the  practical  application  of  the  law 
of  Justice  in  O.  T.  times,  in  spite  of  the  frequent  at- 
tempts of  legislators  and  prophets  to  break  through  bounds 
which  were  cramping  their  expanding  ethical  and  relig- 
ious conceptions.  But  not  until  our  Lord,  in  one  of  the 
most  dramatic  passages  in  the  Gospels,  showed  that  even 
the  apostate,  excommunicated,  half-caste  Samaritan^ — 
the  traditional  enemy,  since  the  Exile,  of  the  orthodox 
Jew — was  a  '^neighbour,"  and  therefore  to  be  loved  as 
oneself;  not  until  the  Apostle  of  the  Nations,  following 
his  Master,  and  even  quoting  a  Greek  poet  in  support  of 
a  Christian  dogma,^  formulated,  for  Jew  and  Gentile  alike, 
the  doctrine  of  the  Brotherhood  of  Man,  founded  on  the 
universal  Fatherhood  of  God^ — not  till  then  did  the 
Mosaic  Law  of  Justice  reach  its  full  development  and  ex- 
pression. 

When  the  old  Law  said,  "Thou  shalt  love  they  neigh- 
bour as  thyself,''  the  context  usually  shows  that  "neigh- 
bour'' means  merely  "fellow-citizen."^  But  the  same  words 
in  the  N.  T.  always  have  an  infinitely  wider  meaning,  for 
Christ  has  told  us  that  every  man  is  our  neighbour.^  To 
love  one's  neighbour  as  oneself  is  "the  royal  law  accord- 

1.  Isa.  xxxii.  1,  16,  17.    For  the  contrast,  see  Hos.  x.  13,  14. 

2.  Luke  X.  25-37,  ix.  51-56;  2  Kings  xvii.  24;  Ezra  iv.  8-10;  John  iv.  9. 
viii.  48;  Ecclus.  1.  25,  26. 

3.  Acts  xvii.  28. 

4.  Acts  xvii.  26;  Rom.  x.  12;  Gal.  iii.  28;  Col.  iii.  11.  See  an  eloquent 
passage  on  this  side  of  St.  Paul's  teaching  by  the  eminent  Jewish  scholatj  C. 
G.  Montefiore,  in  his  "First  Impressions  of  Paul,"  Jewish  Quarterly  Review, 
April,  1894,  p.  431. 

5.  As  Lev.  xix.  18;  Prov.  iii.  29.  ^    , 

6.  Matt.  V.  43-45;  vii.  12,  xix,  19,  xxii.  39,  40;  Mark  xii.  31-34;  Luke  x. 
27,  36,  37. 

83 


ing  to  the  Scripture."^  It  is  the  only  legitimate  restraint 
upon  our  liberty,^  because  "love  worketh  no  ill  to  his 
neighbour:  therefore  love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  Law."^ 
It  is  at  once  the  foundation,  the  outcome,  and  the  test 
of  our  love  for  God;  for  "he  that  loveth  not  knoweth 
not  God;  for  God  is  love.  .  .  .  If  we  love  one  another, 
God  dwelleth  in  us.  .  .  .  He  that  loveth  not  his  brother 
whom  he  hath  seen,  how  can  he  love  God  whom  he  hath 
not  seen  ?''^ 

§  8.  For,  when  we  turn  from  the  Old  Testament  to 
the  New,  we  find  that  Christ  and  His  Apostles  insist,  no 
less  than  Moses  and  the  Prophets  had  done  before  them, 
on  the  fundamental  importance  of  Justice.  In  "the  Song 
of  the  Lamb,'*  as  well  as  in  "the  Song  of  Moses,  the 
servant  of  God,"  "righteous  and  true  are  Thy  ways.  Thou 
King  of  the  ages^  ...  all  the  nations  shall  come  and 
worship  before  Thee;  for  Thy  righteous  acts  have  been 
made  manifest'';®  the  great  multitude  in  the  apocalyptic 
heaven,  like  the  singers  in  the  Jerusalem  Temple,  tell  of 
the  justice  of  God's  judgments."^  Justice  is  still  the 
dominant  note;  but,  in  the  N.  T.,  we  hear  it  in  even 
greater  fulness  and  richness,  for  it  is  sounded  with  all 
its  harmonics.  The  N.  T.  formula — "Ye  have  heard  that 
it  was  said  by  them  of  old  time  .  .  .  but  I  say  unto  you" 
— enlarged  and  extended  the  ethical  content  of  the  term 
"righteousness"  or  "justice."  "I  am  not  come  to  destroy 
the  Law  or  the  Prophets,  but  to  fulfil"® — to  give  a  wider 
and  deeper  import  to  the  principles  they  enunciated.  It 
is  good  to  abstain  from  overt  acts  like  murder,  or  adul- 
tery, or  false  swearing.  "But  I  say  unto  you,"  don't  even 
harbour  angry  feelings  unjustly  toward  your  neighbour; 
don't  wrong  a   woman  even  in  your  inmost    thought; 

1.  James  ii.  8. 

2.  Gal.  V.  13,  14;  1  Pet.  ii.  16.  Co.  Tobit  iv.  15.  Every  man  "has  free- 
dom to  do  all  that  he  wills,  provided  he  infringes  not  the  equal  freedom  of 
any  other  man"  (Herbert  Spencer,  Social  Statics  (1850),  eh.  ix.  §  1). 

3.  Rom.  xiii.  9,  10. 

4.  1  John  iv.  8,  12,  16,  20. 

5.  Many  ancient  authorities  read  "King  of  the  nations." 

6.  Rev.  XV.  3,  4  [R.  V.]. 

7.  Rev.  xix.  2. 

8.  Matt.  V.  21  ff.    Cp.  Paul  in  Acts  xxiv.  14. 

84 


speak  the  truth  always,  simply  and  straightforwardly: 
be  perfectly  just  in  thought  and  word  and  deed,  "as 
your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  is  perfect/'^ 

Even  when  "righteousness"  had  become  a  technical 
term  in  the  more  highly  developed  Theology  of  the  post- 
exilic  Jewish  Church  and  of  the  early  Christian  writers, 
its  original  ethical  meaning  was  included  in,  and  not  super- 
seded by  the  new  use  of  the  old  word.  To  be  "justified" 
was  to  be  put  into  one's  right  and  just  and  "normar'  rela- 
tion to  God  and  man.  The  O.  T.  writers  tell  us  that 
"righteousness  exalteth  a  nation'' ;2  that  the  keeping  of 
the  just  Law  of  God  is  "not  a  vain  thing  for  you;  be- 
cause it  is  your  [national]  life;^  and  through  this  thing 
ye  shall  prolong  your  days  [as  a  nation]  in  the  land, 
whither  ye  go  over  Jordan  to  possess  it."^  And  when 
the  Son  of  Man  judges  "all  nations,"  it  is  not  by  the 
standard  of  orthodoxy  of  belief,  but  by  the  standard  of 
rightness  in  social  conduct — by  their  treatment  of  the 
hungry,  the  thirsty,  the  homeless,  the  poor  and  unfortunate 
— that  He  separates  the  sheep  from  the  goats.^ 

If  the  great  Prophet  of  Israel  promises  the  material 
blessings  of  prosperity,  fruitfulness,  and  good  health  to 
those  who  are  obedient  to  the  just  Law  of  Jehovah,^  the 
Prophet  greater  than  he,  the  Preacher  on  the  mount,  tells 
us  that  we  shall  cease  to  be  "worried  to  death""^  about 
the  supply  of  our  daily,  bodily  needs  only  if  we  "seek 

1.  Cp.  Zech.  viii.  16,  17. 

2.  Prov.  xiv.  34  (Vulg.  Justitta  elevat  gentem). 

3.  And  so  of  the  individual  (Prov.  xii.  28;  Isa.  xxxiii.  15,  16). 

4.  Deut.  xxxii.  47. 

5.  Matt.  XXV.  31-46. 

6.  Deut.  vii.  12  ff.,  xi.  13  ff.,  etc. 

7.  "Take  no  thought"  (R.  V.,  "be  not  anxious'*).  Cr.  M^  ficpitivarf 
(cp.  1  Sam.  ix.  5  with  x.  2).  The  phrase  in  A.  V.  at  the  time  well  represented 
the  meaning  of  the  Gr.  Baret's  Alvearie  (1580)  translates  "take  you^  no 
thought"  bv  noli  te  solicitudine  conHcere.  "The  pale  cast  of  thought"  is 
associated  by  Shakespeare  {Hamlet,  III.  1;  Ant.  and  Chop.,  IV.  6)  with  a 
guilty  conscience  and  with  the  contemplation  of  suicide.  So  "take  thought 
and  die  for  Caesar,"  Jul.  Caes.  II.  1.  "Queen  Catherine  Parr  [wife  of  Henry 
\ail.]  died  of  thought"  (Somers'  Tracts,  1.  172).  "Gonzales  was  done  to 
death  by  Gasca.  Soto  died  of  thought  in  Florida"  (Purchas's  Pilgrtmage 
(1613),  p.  871).  "Hawis,  an  alderman  of  London,  was  put  in  trouble,  and 
died  with  thought  and  anguish,  before  his  business  came  to  an  end"  (Bacon, 
Henry  VII.  (1622),  p.  230). 

85 


first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  His  [its]  righteousness.'*^ 
So  only  shall  "all  these  things" — food  as  sure  as  the 
birds',  clothing  as  beautiful  as  the  lilies' — be  "added  un- 
to us" ;  "for  your  heavenly  Father  knoweth  that  ye  have 
need  of  these  things."^  So,  in  the  universal  human  prayer 
— "The  Lord's  prayer" — we  ask  first  that  God's  kingdom 
may  come;  then  may  we  add,  "Give  us,''  all  of  us,  "day 
by  day  our  daily  bread." 

The  message  of  Jeremiah,  "To  turn  aside  the  right  of 
a  man  before  the  face  of  the  Most  High,  to  subvert  a 
man  in  his  cause,  the  Lord  approveth  not,"^  is  re-echoed 
with  startling  emphasis  and  irresistible  appeal  in  St. 
Paul's  letter  to  Timothy:  "Nevertheless  the  foundation  of 
God  standeth  sure,  having  this  seal.  .  .  .  Let  every  one 
that  nameth  the  name  of  Christ  stand  aloof  from  in- 
justice*'^ 

Micah  of  Moresheth-Gath  asked  the  Hebrews  of  the 
later  monarchy  the  searching  question:  "Will  the  Lord 
be  pleased  with  [sacrifices  of]  ten  thousands  of  rams, 
or  with  ten  thousands  of  rivers  of  oil?  .  .  .  He  hath 
showed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good;  and  what  doth  the 
Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy, 
and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God?"^  and,  in  a  later  gen- 
eration, the  Son  of  Man  told  the  most  religious  Jews  of 
His  time,  in  terms  of  bitter  denunciation,  that  the  most 
scrupulous  observance  of  the  outward  forms  of  religion, 
even  to  the  meticulous  tithing  of  the  smallest  herbs  in 
the  kitchen  garden,  could  not  make  them  fit  to  enter  into 
the  kingdom  of  Heaven  so  long  as  they  were  unjust 
towards  their  fellows,  and  plundered  the  poor  and  help- 
less.^   "Woe  unto  you,  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypocrites ! 

1.  Gr.  T7]v  diKaioavfTjv  avrov ',  Vulg.,  justitiam  ejus;  "justice."  as  in 
Douai  Version. 

2.  Matt.  vi.  24-34;  Luke  xii.  22-31. 

3.  Lam.  iii.  35,  36. 

4.  2  Tim.  ii.  19.  The  A.  V.  has  "depart  from  iniquity";  R.  V.,  "depart 
from  unrighteousness."    The  Gr.  is  dTrotrr^rw  dirb  dSiKias. 

5.  Mic.  vi.  6-12;  Prov.  xxi.  3;  Isa.  i.  10-17;  Iviii.  5-12,  Ixi.  8;  Jer.  vii. 
4-7;  Amos  v.  21-24;  Hos.  vi.  6;  Ps.  I.  7-23  (li.  16-19);  Ixix.  30,  31;  Heb. 
xiii.  15,  16. 

6.  Matt.  V.  20,  xxiii.  4-14,  23-33;  Mark  xii.  38-40;  Luke  xi,  42,  xx.  47; 
cp.  James  i.  27. 

86 


Ye  devour  widows'  houses,  and  for  a  pretence  make  long 
prayers.  ...  Ye  pay  tithe  of  mint  and  anise  and  cum- 
min, and  have  omitted  the  weightier  matters  of  the  law — 
judgment,  mercy  and  faith." 

§  9.  Justice  or  Equity  is,  therefore,  the  foundation  of 
the  law  of  social  life,  both  in  the  Old  Testament  and  in 
the  New.  What,  then,  follows  as  to  the  Land  Question  ? 
Let  the  results  of  our  inquiry  into  the  teaching  of  the 
Law  and  the  Prophets  be  briefly  restated  in  the  language 
of  a  modern  philosopher. 

''Equity,''  wrote  Herbert  Spencer  in  the  middle  of  last 
century,^  "does  not  permit  private  property  in  land." 

'The  verdict  given  by  pure  equity  .  .  .  dictates  the 
assertion,  that  the  right  of  mankind  at  large  to  the 
earth's  surface  is  still  valid ;  all  deeds,  customs,  and  laws 
notwithstanding"  (Social  Statics,  ix.  §  3). 

"It  is  impossible  to  discover  any  mode  in  which  land 
can  become  private  property"  (Ibid.  §  4). 

"The  theory  of  the  co-heirship  of  all  men  to  the  soil 
is  consistent  with  the  highest  civilisation  .  .  .  however 
difficult  it  may  be  to  embody  that  theory  in  fact.  Equity 
sternly  commands  it  to  be  done"  (§  10). 

It  is  quite  clear  that  there  is  no  difference,  except  in 
literary  form,  between  Spencer's  conclusions,  and  those 
which  have  been  deduced,  in  the  foregoing  chapters, 
from  the  writings  of  the  Hebrew  Lawgivers  and 
Prophets.  The  famous  ninth  chapter  of  Social  Statics 
might  quite  well  be  published,  as  the  Church  Catechism 
sometimes  is,  "with  Scripture  proofs." 

§  10.  Even  the  modern  method  for  doing  that  which, 
"however  difficult,"  Justice  "sternly  commands  ^  to  be 
done," — the  method  inseparably  connected  w^ith  the 
great  name  of  Henry  George, — can  plead  scriptural  war- 


1.     Social  Statics,  ch.  ix.  J  2.     On  Spencer's  later  partml  ret*'^,ctai\o"/ ^^ 

Spei 
iblici 

87 


Henry  George,  A  Perplexed  Philosopher  (1892);  Spencer,  Justice  {\^9\)\  and 
the  present  writer's  controversy  with  Spencer  in  tne  London  Daily  Chrontcte 
(1904).     (Reprinted:  Land  Values  Publication  Department,  876  Strand.     Id.) 


rant  for  the  principle  which  underHes  and  justifies  it. 
For,  as  we  have  seen,^  it  is  not  by  means  of  "compensa- 
tion" to  landlords,  which  Spencer  by  implication  repud- 
iated in  Social  Statics  and  by  implication  defended  forty 
years  later  in  Justice,  but  by  the  taxation  of  land  values, 
a  proposal  which  he  consistently  ignored,  that  we  can 
justly  reassert  "the  co-heirship  of  all  men  to  the  soil," 
justly  re-establish  the  equal  "right  to  the  use  of  the 
earth." 

It  is  no  part  of  the  plan  of  this  little  book  to  work 
out  the  application  of  this  reform  to  modern  social  con- 
ditions. That  is  done,  in  principle,  in  Henry  George's 
books:  in  detail,  with  reference  to  English  politics,  in 
the  numerous  publications  of  the  Leagues  for  the  Tax- 
ation of  Land  Values. 

§  11.  Does  this  "simple  but  sovereign  remedy"  of  the 
Prophet  of  San  Francisco  seem  too  simple  to  serve  as 
a  solvent  for  an  unjust  social  system?  Is  it  hard  to 
the  "nationalisation"  and  "socialisation"  of  all  the  land 
values  as  the  sole  basis  of  taxation  can  do  so  much  that 
is  claimed  for  it,  can  make  the  doing  of  so  many  other  re- 
forms so  much  easier,  or — render  them  altogether  unnec- 
essary? Does  not  the  terrible  nature  of  our  social  disease 
call  for  something  "much  more  effective"  than  the  grad- 
ual establishment  of  just  conditions  under  which  grown 
men  and  women,  using  their  God-given  faculties  in  a  free 
society,  can  work  out  their  own  social  salvation  ?"  Is  not 
the  "nationalisation"  and  "socialisation"  of  all  the  land 
by  one  magnificent  financial  operation,  and  the  regimenta- 
tion of  the  workers  upon  it  under  Commissions  of  Ex- 
perts, far  better  than  all  your  "Single  Tax"  ? 

Hear  ye  the  parable  of  Naaman  the  Syrian. — 

"Now  Naaman,  captain  of  the  host  of  the  King  of  Syria 
was  a  great  man  with  his  master  ...  a  mighty  man  in  valour, 
but  he  was  a  leper.  ... 

"So  Naaman  came  with  his  horses  and  with  his  chariot, 
and  stood  at  the  door  of  the  house  of  Elisha.    And  Elisha 

1.     Chapter  VI. 

88 


sent  a  messenger  unto  him,  saying,  Go  and  wash  in  Jordan 
seven  times,  and  thy  flesh  shall  come  again  to  thee,  and  thou 
shalt  be  clean. 

"But  Naaman  was  wroth,  and  went  away,  and  said,  Be- 
hold, I  thought.  He  will  surely  come  out  to  me,  and  stand, 
and  call  on  the  name  of  the  Lord  his  God,  and  strike  his  hand 
over  the  place,  and  recover  the  leper.  Are  not  Abana  and 
Pharpar,  rivers  of  Damascus,  better  than  all  the  waters  of 
Israel?  may  I  not  wash  in  them,  and  be  clean?  So  he  turned 
and  went  away  in  a  rage. 

"And  his  servants  came  near,  and  spake  unto  him,  and 
said.  My  father,  if  the  prophet  had  bid  thee  do  some  greai 
thing,  wouldest  thou  not  have  done  it?  how  much  rather  then, 
when  he  saith  to  thee.  Wash,  and  be  clean? 

"Then  went  he  down,  and  dipped  himself  seven  times  in 
Jordan,  according  to  the  saying  of  the  man  of  God :  and  his 
flesh  came  again  like  unto  the  flesh  of  a  little  child,  and  he 
was  clean."  (2  Kings  v.  1-14). 


"And  if  I  have  written  well  and  to  the  point  in  my 
story,  this  is  what  I  myself  desired;  but  if  meanly  and 
indifferently,  this  is  all  I  could  attain  unto.  For  as  it  is 
distasteful  to  drink  wine  alone,  and  in  like  manner  again 
to  drink  water  alone,  while  the  mingling  of  wine  with 
water  at  once  giveth  full  pleasantness  to  the  flavour;  so 
also  the  fashioning  of  the  language  delighteth  the  ears 
of  them  that  read  the  story.    And  here  shall  be  the  end.'*^ 

1.     2  Mace.  XV.  38,  39. 


89 


APPENDIX 

A.   The  Encroachments  of  Injustice 

The  setting-up  of  a  privileged  class — 

"He  [the  king]  will  take  your  fields,  and  your  vine- 
yards, and  your  oliveyards,  even  the  best  of  them,  and 
give  them  to  his  servants.  And  he  will  take  the  tenth 
of  your  seed,  and  of  your  vineyards,  and  give  them  to 
his  officers,^  and  to  his  servants.  And  he  will  take  your 
menservants,  and  your  maidservants,  and  your  goodliest 
young  men,2  and  your  asses,  and  put  them  to  his  work. 
He  will  take  the  tenth  of  your  sheep,  and  ye  shall  be  his 
servants.  And  ye  shall  cry  out  in  that  day  because  of 
your  king,  which  ye  shall  have  chosen  you''  (1  Sam. 
viii.  14-18;  cp.  Ezek.  xlvi.  16-18;  Jer.  xxii.  13-17,  on 
which  see  above,  Chap.  VII.  §  3). 

*Thy  princes  are  rebellious,  and  companions  of  thieves : 
every  one  loveth  gifts  [i.e,  bribes],  and  followeth  after 
rewards :  they  judge  not  the  fatherless,  neither  does  the 
cause  of  the  widow  come  unto  them.  Therefore  saith  the 
Lord,  the  Lord  of  hosts,  the  mighty  One  of  Israel,  Ah,  I 
will  ease  Me  of  Mine  adversaries,  and  avenge  Me  of 
Mine  enemies''  (Isa.  i.  23,  24). 

— leads  to  land  monopoly — 

*The  Lord  standeth  up  to  plead,  and  standeth  to 
judge  the  people.  The  Lord  will  enter  into  judgment  with 
the  ancients  of  His  people,  and  the  princes  thereof :  for 


1.  R.  V.  m.,  eunuchs. 

2.  LXX,  goodliest  herds. 


90 


ye  have  eaten  up  the  vineyard ;  the  spoil  of  the  poor  is  in 
your  houses.  What  mean  ye  that  ye  beat  My  people  to 
pieces,  and  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor?  saith  the  Lord 
God  of  hosts''  (Isa.  iii.  13-15). 

''Woe  unto  them  that  join  house  to  house,  that  lay 
field  to  field,  till  there  be  no  room,  and  ye  be  made  to 
dwell  alone  in  the  midst  of  the  earth !"  (Isa.  v.  8  [R.V.]  ; 
cp.  Mic.  ii.,  iii.,  on  which  see  above,  Chap.  III.  §  10). 

"Woe  unto  them  that  decree  unrighteous  decrees,  and 
that  write  grievousness  which  they  have  prescribed;  to 
turn  aside  the  needy  from  judgment  and  to  take  away  the 
right  from  the  poor  of  My  people,  that  widows  may  be 
their  prey,  and  that  they  may  rob  the  fatherless*'  (Isa. 
X.  1,  2). 

— and  extremes  of  riches  and  poverty. 

'Thus  saith  the  Lord;  For  three  transgressions  of 
Israel,  and  for  four,  I  will  not  turn  away  the  punish- 
ment thereof ;  because  they  sold  the  righteous  for  silver, 
and  the  poor  for  a  pair  of  shoes  ;^  that  pant  after  the 
dust  of  the  earth  on  the  head  of  the  poor,^  and  turn 
aside  the  way  of  the  meek :  .  .  .  and  they  lay  themselves 
down  upon  clothes  laid  to  pledge  by  every  altar,  and  they 
drink  the  wine  of  the  condemned^  in  the  house  of  their 
god"  (Amos  ii.  6-8). 

"For  among  My  people  are  found  wicked  men;  they 
watch,  as  fowlers  lie  in  wait;  they  set  a  trap,  they  catch 
men.  As  a  cage  is  full  of  birds,  so  are  their  houses  full 
of  deceit;  therefore  they  are  become  great,  and  waxen 

1.  This  expression  is  probably  connected  with  the  practice  of  selling  land 
by  the  transfer  of  a  shoe  (cp.  viii.  6  and  Ruth  iv.  7).  In  1  Sam.  xii.  S, 
the  LXX  reads:  "Of  whose  hand  have  I  received  a  bribe  or  a  pair  of  shoes?" 
cp.  Ecclus.  xlvi.  19.  "The  shoe  may  therefore  be  regarded  as  the  title-deed 
of  the  needy  man's  inheritance,  which  the  rich  man  has  appropriated"  (Horton 
in  Century  Bible,  ad  he,  quoting  Expository  Times,  xii.  378). 

2.  "This  could  only  mean  that  the  land-hunger  is  so  great  that  they  de- 
sire even  the  dust  which  rests  on  the  poor  man's  head,  perhaps  sprinkled  on 
it  as  a  sign  of  mourning"  (Horton).  The  LXX  suggests  to  Prof.  G.  A. 
Smith  the  rendering:  "Who  trample  to  the  dust  of  the  earth  the  heads  of 
the  poor." 

3.  R.  v.,  of  such  as  have  been  fined. 

91 


rich.  They  are  waxen  fat,  they  shine ;  yea,  they  overpass  in 
deeds  of  wickedness ;  they  plead  not  the  cause,  the  cause  of 
the  fatherless,  that  they  should  prosper ;  and  the  right  of 
the  needy  do  they  not  judge.  Shall  I  not  visit  for  these 
things  ?  saith  the  Lord :  shall  not  My  soul  be  avenged  on 
such  a  nation  as  this?"  (Jer.  v.  26-29  [R.  V.]). 


B.    The  Effects  of  Land  Monopoly 

The  denial  of  equal  rights  in  land  drives  men  to  the 
least  productive  soil — produces  poverty — hunger  in  the 
midst  of  plenty — homelessness — misery  in  overcrowded 
cities — crime — and  black  despair, 

"There  are  that  remove  the  landmarks; 

They  violently  take  away  flocks  and  feed  them.i 

They  drive  away  the  ass  of  the  fatherless, 

They  take  the  widow's  ox  for  a  pledge. 

They  turn  the  needy  out  of  the  way: 

The  poor  of  the  earth  hide  themselves  together. 

Behold,  as  wild  asses  in  the  desert 

They  go  forth  to  their  work,  seeking  diligently  for  meat; 

The  wilderness  yieldeth  them  food  for  their  children  2 

They  cut  their  provender  in  the  field; 

And  they  glean  the  vintage  of  the  wicked. 

They  lie  all  night  naked  without  clothing, 

And  have  no  covering  in  the  cold. 

They  are  wet  with  the  showers  of  the  mountains, 

And  embrace  the  rock  for  want  of  a  shelter. 

There  are  that  pluck  the  fatherless  from  the  breast, 

And  [R.V.m]  take  in  pledge  that  which  is  on  the  poor : 

So  that  they  go  about  naked  without  clothing, 

And  being  an-hungred  they  carry  the  sheaves; 

They  make  oil  within  the  walls  of  these  men ; 

They  tread  their  wine-presses,  and  suffer  thirst. 

From  out  of  the  populous  city  men  groan, 

And  the  soul  of  the  woundeth  crieth  out : 

Yet  God  imputeth  it  not  for  folly. 

These  are  of  them  that  rebel  against  the  light ; 

They  know  not  the  ways  thereof, 

Nor  abide  in  the  paths  thereof. 

The  murderer  risetli  with  the  light,  he  killeth  the  poor  and  needy ; 

1.  LXX,  flocks  with  their  shepherd. 

2.  Prof.  Peake  (Century  Bible,  ad.  loc.)  suggests  the  rendering:  "Be- 
hold, as  wild  asses  of  the  desert  they  go  forth,  seeking  diligently  the  prey  of 
the  wilderness.     There  is  no  bread  for  the  children." 

92 


And  in  the  night  he  is  as  a  thief. 
The  eye  also  of  the  adulterer  waiteth  for  the  twilight, 
Saying,  No  eye  shall  see  me: 
And  he  disguiseth  his  face. 
In  the  dark  they  dig  through  houses: 

[R.V.m]  Which  they  had  marked  for  themselves  in  the  daytime ; 
They  know  not  the  light. 

For  the  morning  is  to  all  of  them  as  the  shadow  of  death; 
For  they  know  the  terrors  of  the  shadow  of  death" 
(Job  xxiv.  2-17  [R.V]). 

Land  monopoly,  by  its  economic  wastefulness, — 

''In  mine  ears  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts,  Of  a  truth  many 
houses  shall  be  desolate,  even  great  and  fair,  without  in- 
habitant. For  ten  acres  of  vineyard  shall  yield  one  bath, 
and  a  homer  of  seed  shall  yield  but  an  ephah"^  (Isa.  v. 
9,  10  [R.V.]  ;  cp.  Amos  iii.  15). 

''And  as  for  you,  O  my  flock,  thus  saith  the  Lord  God : 
Behold,  I  judge  between  cattle  and  cattle,  between  the 
rams  and  the  he-goats.  Seemeth  it  a  small  thing  unto 
you  to  have  eaten  up  the  good  pasture,  but  ye  must 
tread  down  with  your  feet  the  residue  of  your  pastures? 
and  to  have  drunk  of  the  deep  [R.  V.,  clear]  waters,  but 
ye  must  foul  the  residue  with  your  feet?  And  as  for 
My  flock,  they  eat  that  which  ye  have  trodden  with  your 
feet;  and  they  drink  that  which  ye  have  fouled  with 
your  feet. 

"Therefore  thus  saith  the  Lord  God  unto  them;  Be- 
hold I,  even  I,  will  judge  between  the  fat  cattle  and 
between  the  lean  cattle.  Because  ye  have  thrust  with 
side  and  with  shoulder,  and  pushed  all  the  diseased  with 
your  horns,  till  ye  have  scattered  them  abroad;  there- 
fore will  I  save  My  flock,  and  they  shall  no  more  be  a 
prey;  and  I  will  judge  between  cattle  and  cattle"  (Ezek. 
xxxiv.  17-22;  cp.  Prov.  xiii.  23  [R.V.]). 

— brings  evil  upon  the  robbers, — 

"Forasmuch  therefore  as  ye  trample  upon  the  poor, 
and  take  exactions  from  him  of  wheat:  ye  have  built 

1.  An  ephah  (dry  measure)  and  a  bath  (liquid  measure)  were  each  the 
tenth  part  of  a  homer  (Ezek.  xlv.  11).    Homer— about  90  gallons. 

93 


houses  of  hewn  stone,  but  ye  shall  not  dwell  in  them;  ye 
have  planted  pleasant  vineyards,  but  ye  shall  not  drink 
the  wine  thereof.  For  I  know  how  manifold  are  your 
transgressions,  and  how  mighty  are  your  sins;  ye  that 
afflict  the  just,  that  take  a  bribe,  and  that  turn  aside  the 
needy  in  the  gate  from  their  right"  (Amos  v.  11,  12 
[R.V.]). 

"And  I  will  come  near  to  you  to  judgment;  and  I 
will  be  a  swift  witness  against  the  sorcerers,  and  against 
the  adulterers,  and  against  false  swearers,  and  against 
those  that  oppress  the  hireling  in  his  wages,  the  widow, 
and  the  fatherless,  and  that  turn  aside  the  stranger  from 
his  right,  and  fear  not  Me,  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts" 
(Mai.  iii.  6). 

"Go  to  now,  ye  rich,  weep  and  howl  for  your  miseries 
that  are  coming  upon  you.  Your  riches  are  corrupted, 
and  your  garments  are  moth-eaten.  Your  gold  and  your 
silver  are  rusted ;  and  their  rust  shall  be  for  a  testimony 
against  you,  and  shall  eat  your  flesh  as  fire.  Ye  have 
laid  up  your  treasure  in  the  last  days.  Behold  the  hire 
of  the  laborours  who  moved  your  fields,  which  is  if  you 
kept  back  by  fraud,  crieth  out :  and  the  cries  of  them  that 
reaped  have  entered  into  the  ears  of  the  Lord  of  Sa- 
baoth.  Ye  have  lived  delicately  on  the  earth,  and  taken 
your  plasure;  ye  have  nourished  your  hearts  in  a  day  of 
slaughter"  (Jas.  v.  1-5  [R.V.]  ;  cp.  Job  xx. ;  1  Tim.  vi. 
9,  10,  17). 

— and  upon  the  robbed. 

"But  this  is  a  people  robbed  and  spoiled;  they  are  all 
of  them  snared  in  holes,  and  they  are  hid  in  prison  houses  : 
they  are  for  a  prey,  and  none  delivereth ;  for  a  spoil,  and 
none  saith.  Restore"  (Isa.  xlii.  22). 

Luxury  brings  social  deterioration  and  carelessness 
about  national  welfare. 

"Woe  to  them  that  are  at  ease  in  Zion  ...  the  notable 
men  of  the  chief  of  the  nations,  to  whom  the  house  of 

94 


Israel  come!  ...  Ye  that  put  far  away  the  evil  day, 
and  cause  the  seat  of  violence  to  come  near ;  that  lie  up- 
on beds  of  ivory,  and  stretch  themselves  upon  their 
couches,  and  eat  the  lambs  out  of  the  flock,  and  the  calves 
out  of  the  midst  of  the  stall ;  that  sing  idle  songs  to  the 
sound  of  the  viol ;  that  devise  for  themselves  instruments 
of  music,  like  David's;  that  drink  v^ine  in  bowls,  and 
anoint  themselves  with  the  chief  ointments ;  but  they  are 
not  grieved  for  the  affliction  of  Joseph.  Therefore  now 
shall  they  go  captive  with  the  first  that  go  captive.  .  .  . 
Saith  the  Lord,  ...  I  abhor  the  pride  of  Jacob,  and  hate 
his  palaces:  therefore  will  I  deliver  up  the  city  with 
all  that  is  therein.  And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  if  there 
remain  ten  men  in  one  house,  that  they  shall  die.  .  .  . 
For,  behold,  the  Lord  commandeth,  and  the  great  house 
shall  be  smitten  with  breaches,  and  the  little  house  with 
clefts.  ...  Ye  have  turned  judgment  into  gall,  and  the 
fruit  of  righteousness  into  wormwood"  (Amos  vi.  1-13 

[R-V.]). 

Idle  and  luxurious  ladies — 

''Moreover  the  Lord  said.  Because  the  daughters  of 
Zion  are  haughty,  and  walk  with  stretched  forth  necks 
and  wanton  eyes,  walking  and  mincing  as  they  go,  and 
making  a  tinkling  with  their  feet:  therefore  the  Lord 
will  smite  with  a  scab  the  crown  of  the  head  of  the  daugh- 
ters of  Zion,  and  the  Lord  will  lay  bare  their  secret  parts. 
In  that  day  the  Lord  will  take  away  the  bravery  of  their 
anklets,  and  the  cauls,  and  the  crescents;  the  pendants, 
and  the  bracelets,  and  the  mufflers;  the  headtires,  and 
the  ankle  chains,  and  the  sashes,  and  the  perfume  boxes, 
and  the  amulets ;  the  rings,  and  the  nose  jewels ;  the  fes- 
tival robes,  and  the  mantles,  and  the  shawls,  and  the 
satchels;  the  hand  mirrors,  and  the  fine  linen,  and  the 
turbans,  and  the  veils.  And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that 
instead  of  sweet  spices  there  shall  be  rottenness;  and 
instead  of  a  girdle  a  rope;  and  instead  of  well  set  hair 
baldness ;  and  instead  of  a  stomacher  a  girding  of  sack- 
cloth; branding  instead  of  beauty.     Thy  men  shall  fall 

95 


by  the  sword,  and  thy  mighty  in  the  war.  And  her  gates 
shall  lament  and  mourn;  and  she  shall  be  desolate  and 
sit  upon  the  ground.  And  seven  women  shall  take  hold 
of  one  man  in  that  day,  saying.  We  will  eat  our  own 
bread,  and  wear  our  own  apparel:  only  let  us  be  called 
by  thy  name;  take  thou  away  our  reproach*'  (Isa.  iii.  16 
— iv.  1  [R.V.]  ;  cp.  the  four  preceding  verses,  iii.  12-15; 
xxxii.  9-14). 

— incite  their  husbands  to  further  injustice. 

"Hear  this  word,  ye  kine  of  Bashan,  that  are  in  the 
mountain  of  Samaria,  which  oppress  the  poor,  which 
crush  the  needy,  which  say  unto  their  lords.  Bring,  and 
let  us  drink.  The  Lord  God  hath  sworn  by  His  holiness, 
that,  lo,  the  days  shall  come  upon  you,  that  they  shall 
take  you  away  with  hooks,  and  your  residue  with  fish 
hooks.  And  ye  shall  go  out  at  the  breaches,  every  one 
straight  before  her.  .  .  .  And  I  also  have  given  you 
cleanness  of  teeth  in  all  your  cities,  and  want  of  bread  in 
all  your  places :  yet  have  ye  not  returned  unto  Me,  saith 
the  Lord"  (Amos  iv.  1-3,  6  [R.V.] ;  and  cp.  the  rest  of 
the  chapter). 

The  parlous  plight  of  the  poor. 

"The  destruction  of  the  poor  is  their  poverty"  (Prov.  x.  15). 

"Remember,  O  Lord,  what  is  come  upon  us: 

Behold,  and  see  our  reproach. 

Our  inheritance  is  turned  unto  strangers, 

Our  houses  unto  aliens. 

We  are  orphans  and  fatherless. 

Our  mothers  are  as  widows. 

We  have  drunken  our  water  for  money; 

Our  wood  is  sold  unto  us. 

Our  pursuers  are  upon  our  necks: 

We  are  weary,  and  have  no  rest"  (Lam.  v.  1-5  [R.V.]). 

"The  needy  shall  not  always  be  forgotten. 

Nor  the  expectation  of  the  poor  perish  for  ever"  (Ps.  ix.  18). 

96 


C.    The   Restoration  of  Equal  Rights. 

Nehemiah  holds  a  mass  meeting — 

'Then  there  arose  a  great  cry  of  the  people  and  of 
their  wives  against  their  brethren  the  Jews.  For  there 
were  that  said,  We,  our  sons  and  our  daughters,  are  many ; 
let  us  get  corn,  that  we  may  eat  and  live.  Some  also 
there  were  that  said.  We  are  mortgaging  our  fields,  and 
our  vineyards,  and  our  houses;  let  us  get  corn,  because 
of  the  dearth.  There  were  also  that  said.  We  have  bor- 
rowed money  for  the  King's  tribute  upon  our  fields  and 
our  vineyards.  Yet  now  our  flesh  is  as  the  flesh  of  our 
brethren,  our  children  as  their  children:  and,  lo,  we 
bring  into  bondage  our  sons  and  our  daughters  to  be 
servants,  and  some  of  our  daughters  are  brought  into 
bondage  already:  neither  is  it  in  our  power  to  help  it; 
for  other  men^  have  our  fields  and  vineyards. 

''And  I  was  very  angry  when  I  heard  their  cry  and 
these  words.  Then  I  consulted  with  myself,  and  con- 
tended with  the  nobles  and  the  rulers  [or  deputies],  and 
said  unto  them,  Ye  exact  usury,  every  one  of  his  brother. 
And  I  held  a  great  assembly  against  them." 

— to  demand  the  abolition  of  land  monopoly 
without  compensation — 

"And  I  said  unto  them,  We  after  our  ability  have  re- 
deemed our  brethren  the  Jews,  which  were  sold  unto 
the  heathen;  and  would  ye  even  sell  your  brethren,  and 
should  they  be  sold  unto  us?  Then  held  they  their 
peace,  and  found  never  a  word.  Also  I  said.  The 
thing  that  ye  do  is  not  good :  ought  ye  not  to  walk  in  the 
fear  of  our  God,  because  of  the  reproach  of  the  heathen 
our  enemies?  And  I  likewise,  my  brethren  and  my  ser- 
vants, do  lend  them  money  and  corn  on  usury.  I  pray 
you,  let  us  leave  off  this  usury.    Restore,  I  pray  you,  to 

1.  The  Lucian  recension  of  the  LXX  reads  "for  the  nobles"  (see  next 
verse). 

97 


them,  even  this  day,  their  fields,  their  vineyards,  their 
oliveyards,  and  their  houses,  also  the  hundredth  part^  of 
the  money,  and  of  the  corn,  the  wine,  and  the  oil,  that 
ye  exact  of  them." 

— and  his  proposed  reforms  are  unanimously 
adopted. 

''Then  said  they,  We  will  restore  them,  and  will  require 
nothing  of  them;  so  will  we  do,  even  as  thou  sayest. 
Then  I  called  the  priests,  and  took  an  oath  of  them, 
that  they  should  do  according  to  this  promise.  Also  I 
shook  out  my  lap,^  and  said,  So  God  shake  out  every  man 
from  his  house,  and  from  his  labour,  that  performeth 
not  this  promise;  even  thus  be  he  shaken  out,  and 
emptied.  And  all  the  congregation  said.  Amen,  and  prais- 
ed the  Lord.  And  the  people  did  according  to  this  prom- 
ise." 

He  abolishes  unjust  taxes  and  land  speculation. 

"Moreover,  from  the  time  I  was  appointed  to  be  their 
governor  in  the  land  of  Judah  ...  I  and  my  brethren 
have  not  eaten  the  bread  of  the  governor.  But  the  for- 
mer governors  that  were  before  me  laid  burdens  upon  the 
people,  and  took  of  them  bread  and  wine,  beside^  forty 
shekels  of  silver;  yea,  even  their  servants  lorded  over 
the  people :  but  so  did  not  I,  because  of  the  fear  of  God 
.  .  .  neither  bought  we  any  land"  (Neh.  v.  1-16  [R.V. 
with  m.]). 

His  reforms  are  carried  out. 

''And  the  princes  of  the  people  dwelt  in  Jerusalem: 
the  rest  of  the  people  also  cast  lots,  to  bring  one  of  ten 
to  dwell  in  Jerusalem  the  holy  city  .  .  .  but  in  the  cities 
of   Judah   dwelt  every   one   in   his   possession   in   their 

1.  (?)  One  per  cent,  per  month.     Usury^rinterest. 

2.  Cp.  Acts  xviii.  6. 

S.     R.  V.  m.,  at  the  rate  of.    Vulg.,  gMf>fWtVr=dail\ . 

98 


cities,  to  wit,  Israel,  the  priests,  and  the  Levites  [etc.]. 
.  .  .  And  the  residue  of  Israel,  of  the  priests,  the  Levites, 
were  in  all  the  cities  of  Judah,  every  one  in  his  inherit- 
ance. .  .  .  And  for  the  villages,  with  their  fields,  some  of 
the  children  of  Judah  dwelt  in  Kiriath-arba,  and  the 
towns  thereof,  and  in  Dibon  [etc.].  .  .  .'*  (Neh.  xi. 
[R.V.]). 

Ezekiel  demands  land  restoration. 

"My  princes  shall  no  more  oppress  My  people ;  but  they 
shall  give  the  land  to  the  house  of  Israel  according  to 
their  tribes''  (Ezek.  xlv.  8  [R.V.]). 

D.    The  Coming  Reign  of  Justice 

With  equal  rights  to  land  restored — 

''Ye  shall  dwell  in  the  land  that  I  gave  to  your  fath- 
ers ;  and  ye  shall  be  My  people,  and  I  will  be  your  God" 
(Ezek.  xxxvi.  28). 

— men  shall  enjoy  the  produce  of  their  labour. 

''Then  shall  they  dwell  in  their  land  that  I  have  given 
to  My  servant  Jacob.  And  they  shall  dwell  safely  therein, 
and  shall  build  houses,  and  plant  vineyards"  (Ezek.  xxviii. 
25,  26). 

"The  Lord  hath  sworn  by  His  right  hand,  and  by  the 
arm  of  His  strength.  Surely  I  will  no  more  give  thy 
corn  to  be  meat  for  thine  enemies;  and  strangers  shall 
not  drink  thy  wine,  for  the  which  thou  hast  laboured ;  but 
they  that  have  garnered  it  shall  eat  it,  and  praise  the  Lord  ; 
and  they  that  have  gathered  it  shall  drink  it  in  the  courts 
of  My  sanctuary"  (Isa.  Ixii.  8,  9   [R.V.]). 

"And  they  shall  build  houses,  and  inhabit  them;  and 
they  shall  plant  vineyards,  and  eat  the  fruit  of  them. 
They  shall  not  build,  and  another  inhabit;  they  shall  not 

99 


plant,  and  another  eat:  for  as  the  days  of  a  tree  shall 
be  the  days  of  My  people,  and  My  chosen  shall  long  enjoy 
the  work  of  their  hands.  They  shall  not  labour  in  vain, 
nor  bring  forth  for  calamity''  (Isa.  Ixv.  21-23  [R.V.]). 

Life  will  he  a  joy — 

''Again  will  I  build  thee,  and  thou  shalt  be  built,  O 
virgin  of  Israel:  again  shalt  thou  be  adorned  with  thy 
tabrets,  and  shalt  go  forth  in  the  dances  of  them  that 
make  merry.  Again  shalt  thou  plant  vineyards  upon  the 
mountains  of  Samaria :  the  planters  shall  plant,  and  shall 
enjoy  the  fruit  thereof.  .  .  .  And  they  shall  come  and 
sing  in  the  height  of  Zion,  and  shall  flow  together  unto  the 
goodness  of  the  Lord,  to  the  corn,  and  to  the  wine,  and  to 
the  oil,  and  to  the  young  of  the  flock  and  of  the  herd: 
and  their  soul  shall  be  as  a  watered  garden;  and  they 
shall  not  sorrow  any  more  at  all.  Then  shall  the  virgin 
rejoice  in  the  dance,  and  the  young  men  and  the  old  to- 
gether: for  I  will  turn  their  mourning  into  joy,  and  will 
comfort  them,  and  make  them  rejoice  from  their  sorrow. 
And  I  will  satiate  the  soul  of  the  priests  with  fatness,  and 
My  people  shall  be  satisfied  with  My  goodness,  saith  the 
Lord'*  (Jer.  xxxi.  4,  5,  12,  13,  14;  cp.  Ps.  xxxiv.  12-16; 
1  Pet.  iii.  10-12). 

— in  happy  childhood  and  hale  old  age. 

''Thus  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts :  There  shall  yet  old 
men  and  old  w^omen  dwell  in  the  streets  of  Jerusalem, 
and  every  man  with  his  staff  in  his  hand  for  very  age.^ 
And  the  streets  of  the  city  shall  be  full  of  boys  and  girls 
playing  in  the  streets  thereof"  (Zech.  viii.  4,  5).  Cp.  1 
Mace.  xiv.  9. 

There  will  he  security  and  plenty  at  home. — 

"For  before  those  days  there  was  no  hire  for  man, 
nor  any  hire  for  beast;  neither  was  there  any  peace 
to  him  that   went  out  or  came   in  because  of  the  ad- 

1.     R.  V.  m.,  for  multitude  of  days. 

100 


versary ;  for  I  set  all  men  every  one  against  his  neighbour. 
But  now  I  will  not  be  unto  the  remnant  of  this  people  as 
in  the  former  days,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts.  For  there 
shall  be  the  seed  of  peace;  the  vine  shall  give  her  fruit, 
and  the  ground  shall  give  her  increase,  and  the  heavens 
shall  give  their  dew;  and  I  will  cause  the  remnant  of  this 
people  to  inherit  all  these  things.  .  .  .  These  are  the 
things  that  ye  shall  do:  Speak  ye  every  man  the  truth 
with  his  neighbour;  execute  the  judgment  of  truth  and 
peace  in  your  gates :  and  let  none  of  you  imagine  evil  in 
your  hearts  against  his  neighbour ;  and  love  no  false  oath : 
for  all  these  are  things  that  I  hate,  saith  the  Lord"  (Zech. 
viii.  10-12,  16,  17  [R.V.]). 

''The  tree  of  the  field  shall  yield  its  fruit,  and  the 
earth  shall  yield  her  increase,  and  they  shall  be  secure  in 
their  land ;  and  they  shall  know  that  I  am  the  Lord,  when 
I  have  broken  the  bars  of  their  yoke,  and  have  delivered 
them  out  of  the  hand  of  those  that  made  bondmen  of 
them.  And  they  shall  no  more  be  a  prey  to  the  heathen, 
neither  shall  the  beast  of  the  earth  devour  them;  but 
they  shall  dwell  securely,  and  none  shall  make  them 
afraid"  (Ezek.  xxxiv.  27,  28  [R.V.m.]  ;  cp.  xxxvi.  29, 
30). 

"Behold,  the  days  come,  saith  the  Lord,  that  the  plow- 
man shall  overtake  the  reaper,  and  the  treader  of  grapes 
him  that  soweth  seed ;  and  the  mountains  shall  drop  sweet 
wine,  and  all  the  hills  shall  melt.  And  I  will  bring  again 
the  captivity  of  My  people  of  Israel,  and  they  shall  build 
the  waste  cities,  and  inhabit  them;  and  they  shall  plant 
vineyards,  and  drink  the  wine  thereof;  they  shall  also 
make  gardens,  and  eat  the  fruit  of  them.  And  I  will  plant 
them  upon  their  land,  and  they  shall  no  more  be  pulled 
up  out  of  their  land  which  I  have  given  them,  saith  the 
Lord  thy  God"  (Amos  ix.  13-15). 

— and  peace  at  home  and  abroad. 
''Until  the  spirit  be  poured  upon  us  from  on  high,  and 

101 


^  ««>  V    . 


'')'>  '  ^-r  ''  *•"''    »  -"'^  *^ 


the  wilderness  become  a  fruitful  field,  and  the  fruitful 
field  be  counted  for  a  forest.  Then  judgment  shall  dwell 
in  the  wilderness,  and  righteousness  shall  abide  in  the 
fruitful  field.  And  the  work  of  righteousness  shall  be 
peace;  and  the  eflfect  of  righteousness  quietness  and  con- 
fidence for  ever.  And  my  people  shall  abide  in  a  peace- 
able habitation,  and  in  sure  dwellings,  and  in  quiet  rest- 
ing places"  (Isa.  xxxii.  15-18  [R.V.]). 

"And  He  shall  judge  between  many  peoples,  and  shall 
reprove  strong  nations  afar  oflf ;  and  they  shall  beat  their 
swords  into  plowshares,  and  their  spears  into  pruning 
hooks:  nation  shall  not  lift  up  sword  against  nation, 
neither  shall  they  learn  war  any  more.  But  they  shall  sit 
every  man  under  his  vine  and  under  his  fig-tree ;  and  none 
shall  make  them  afraid:  for  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  of 
hosts  hath  spoken  it"  (Mic.  iv.  3,  4 ;  cp.  Isa.  ii.  4,  Ixv.  25 ; 
I  Mace.  xiv.  12, 13). 

"In  that  day,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts,  shall  ye  call 
every  man  his  neighbour  under  the  vine  and  under  the 
fig-tree"  (Zech.  iii.  10). 


102 


LIST  OF  JEWISH  AUTHORITIES 
QUOTED 


OLD  TESTAMENT. 


Genesis  i.  1 

i.  27-31  . 

ii.  2,  3,  7,  8,  9 

iii.  17-19,  23 

iv.  2,  17 

viii.   21  . 

ix.  1-3,  4,  5,  6 

ix.   20ff 

xiv.  9 

xviii.  25 

xxiii. 

xxiv.  3  . 

xxviii.  22 

xxxi.  43-55 

xxxiii.  19,  20 

xxxvii.  25ff 

xliv.  16,  17 

xlvi.  32,  34 

xlvii.  18-21 

xlix.  29-32     . 
Exodus  i.  13,  14 

i.  21 

ii.  1,  9,  10,  19 

ii.  11-15 

iii.  . 

iv.  22,  23 

V.  6-19 

xix.  5 

XX.  5,  6 

XX.  11 

XX.  12 

XX.  17 

xxi.  2 

xxi.  7-11 

xxi.  12   . 


15 


27, 


PAGE 
24 

27 
22,  26,  61 
22,  27,  37 
37 
37 
35,  68 
37 
20 
80 
27 
24 
74 
40 
27 
36 
35 

3: 

56 
27 
60 
34 
19 
20 

30,  34 
35 
60 
24 
34 
61 
35 

33,  57 


20, 


46. 


64 
40 
35 


Exodus  xxi.  13,  14 

xxi.  16   . 

xxi.  20,  21,  26,  27 

xxi.  33,  34     . 

xxii.  1-15 

xxii.  21  . 

xxii.  25,  26    . 

xxii.  29 

xxiii.  4,  5,  6,  9 

xxiii.  10-12    . 

xxiii.  14-17    . 

xxiii.  19 

xxviii.  3 

xxx.  17-21     . 

xxxi.   1-6 

xxxi.  13,  14,  17 

xxxii.  35 

xxxiv.  21,  22,  23,  26 

XXXV.  2 

XXXV.  30-35  . 

xxxvi.   1-4     . 

xxxvi-xxxviii 

xl.  12,  30-32  . 
Leviticus  i.-vii. 

iv.  11,   12,  21 

vi.  3,  5  . 

vi.   11     . 

vii.  17,  19,  26 

x.  11       . 

xi.  1-47 

xiii.  xiv.  XV. 

xvii.   10-16     . 

xviii.  21-30    . 

xix.  6,  26 

xix.  9,  10 


PAGE 

72 

56 

46,    57 

82 

66,   64,    75 

78 

82 

29 

78,  80,  82 

61,  63,  81 

60 

29 

68 

68 

68 

59,  61 
33 
,  60,  61 
61 
68 
68 
68 
68 

70,  74 
68 
82 
68 
68 
71 
68 

68.  71 
68 
32 
68 
82 


29, 


67, 


103 


JEWISH  AUTHORITIES  QUOTED— Continued 


Leviticus  xix.  13 

xix.  15,  34-37 

xix.  18    . 

xix.  30    . 

XX.  1-5  . 

XX.  22     . 

xxi.  9     . 

xxii.  8    . 

xxiii.  1-3 

xxiii.  17 

xxiii.  22 

xxiii.  23-44 

xxiv.  17-22 

XXV.  1-7 

XXV.  8-10 

XXV.  11,  12 

XXV.  14-16 

XXV.  18-22 

XXV.  23 

XXV.  25-28 

XXV.  25,  35,  39-43 

XXV.  29-31,  32-3  4 

XXV.  35^8 

XXV.  44-46 

XXV.  47-55 

xxvi.  14-39 

xxvii.  22-24 

xxvii.  28,    30-33 
Numbers  i.  2,  3,  47 

iii.  5  ff. 

iii.  12-13,  44 

iv.  3,  23 

V.  3 

vi.  22-26 

viii.  5  ff. 

x.  35,  36 

xi.   29     . 

xiv.  6-8 

XV.  19-21 

XV.  30-36 

XV.  37-41 

xviii.  14-19 

xviii.  20-24 

xviii.  25-32 

xix.  12,  13, 19, 

XX.  14 

xxi.  14   . 


59,  63, 
46. 


35, 


35, 
33, 


53 


1,20 


PAGE 

56  Numbers  xxi.  21-35 
78,  79  xxvi. 

83  xxvii.  1-11     . 

59  xxvii.  15-23  . 
32,  34  xxix. 

33  xxxi.  18,  26,  27 
32  xxxii.     . 

68  xxxiii.  54 

61  xxxiv.  13,  16-29 

29  XXXV.  1-6,  8,  9-34 

82  xxxvi.  1-12,  13 

60  Deuteronomy  i.  16. 
32,  46  i.  25 
66,  81  ii.  23       . 
51,  59  iii.  19      . 

49  iv.  8 

54  iv.  20      . 

63  iv.  25-28 

27  iv.  41-43 

58  V.  9,  10  . 

56,  64  V.  14,  15 
55,  74  V.  16  . 
78,  82  V.  21 

57  vi.  4-9    . 

57,  58  vii.  12  ff 
47,  65  vii.  15     . 

52  viii.  7,  8,  9 

72,  74  viii.  19,  20 

34,  70  ix.  4,  5  . 

70  x.  9 

74  X.  14 

70,  71  xi.  9-12 

68  xi.  13-21 

67  xii.  6,  17 

70  xii.  12,  18 

67  xii.  16     . 

19  xii.  31     . 

34  xiv.  3-21 
29  xvi.  22-29 

61  XV.   1-14 

67  xvi.   11   . 
74  xvi.  13-16 

72,  74  xvi.  18,  19,  20 

72  xvii.  4,  6,  8 

68  xvii.  8-13 

35  xvii.  14-20 
17  xviii.  1,  2,  3 

104 


38, 


21, 


47, 

77.' 


PAGE 
30 

73,  74 
38 
30 
60 
57 
30 
38 
38 
72 
38 
80 
34 
36 
30 
80 
60 
33 
72 
34 
61 
35 
33 
67 
85 
71 
34,  36 
33 
32 
74 
25 
34 
67,  85 
72 
61,  74 
68 
32 
68 
61,  73 
64,  82 
61 
60 
80,  81 
80,  81 
71,  81 
49 
74 


JEWISH  AUTHORITIES  QUOTED— Continued 


Deuteronomy  xviii.  4 

xix.  1-13 

xix.  6     . 

xix.  14  . 

xix.  15,  16-21 

XX.  3,   4 

XX.  6,  10-20  31, 

xxi.  7,  8 

xxi.  10-14      . 

xxii.  1-4 

xxii.  6,  7,  8,  10 

xxiii.  12-14    . 

xxiii.  15,  16 

xxiii.  17,  18 

xxiii.  19,  20,  24,  25 

xxiv.  6  . 

xxiv.  7  . 

xxiv.  10-13 

xxiv.  14,  15,  17- 

22        .         .  56, 

xxiv.  16 

XXV.  1-3 

XXV.  4    . 

XXV.  5-10 

XXV.  13-16     .  32, 

xxvi.  1-11 

xxvi.  12  ff. 

xxvii.  11-26  .       15,  40, 

xxviii.    . 

xxxi.  10-13 

xxxii.  4 

xxxii.  47 

xxxiii.  10 

xxxiv.    . 
Joshua  i.  2,  6, 11,15 

vi.  21,  24,  26 

vii.  20,  24 

viii.  33 

ix.  3-27 

X.  12,  13 

X.  20  ff   . 

xi.  10,  14,  23;xii.  7-24, 

xiii.-xix.         30,  36,  38, 

xvii.  3,  4 

xyii.  13  .        .        . 

xix.  51  . 

XX.  xxi. 


PAGE 

29  Joshua  xxiv.  32 

72  Judges  i.  1-ii.  5 
35  iii.   31     . 
40  V.             .        .            17, 

72,  81  vi.   2,   11 

67  viii.    23 

37,  57  xviii. 

67  Ruth  iv.  1-10    . 
31,  46  1  Samuel  ii.  12-17 

82  iv.   10     . 

65,  82  viii.  11-18 

68  viii.  22  . 
46  ix.  5;  X.  2 
32  X.  19       . 
82  xi.  5 

47,  82  xii.  3  [Ixx.] 
56  xii.  12,  19 
82  xiii.  1,  2,  6 

xiii.  19-21;    xiy.l4 

78,  82  xiv.  52   . 

35  xvi.  11    . 

80  XX.  6      . 

48,  82  2  Samuel  i.   18 
34,  35  V.  6         . 
78,  79  xiv.  6,  7 

29,  37  xviii.  17;  xix.  8;: 

73  xxiii.  3 
67,  71  1  Kings  i.  50 ;  ii.  28-34 
47,  67  iv.   7 

66,  71  iv.   30     . 
80  viii.  2,  65 
85  viii.  36,  51,  66 

71  ix.  20,  21,  26 

30  xi.  7,  30-33 

30  xii.  16    . 

31  xiv.  24;  xv.  12 
35  xvii. 
40  xviii.   5 
31  xix.  19,  21 
17  xxi. 
31  xxii.  36,  46 

30,  31  2  Kings  iii.  19,  25-27 
72,  74  iv.  1,  42 

38  V.  1-14 

31  ix.  10,  25,  26 

38  xiii.  5     . 

72  xiv.   6     . 


:.  1. 


24, 
31, 


PACl 

27 

31,  36 
65 

30,  35 
35,  36 

49 
31 

35,  91 
74 
35 

49,  90 
35 
85 
49 
37 
91 

28,  49 
35,  49 

65 
40 
37 
34 
17 
31 
35 
35 
80 
72 
49 
19 
60 

35,  60 

36,  57 

31,  33 
35 
32 
33 
49 

37,  65 
40 

32,  35 
32,  37 

29,  56 
89 

34,  40 
35 
35 


22 


105 


JEWISH  AUTHORITIES  QUOTED— Continued 


PAGE 

PAGE 

2  Kings  XV.  5   . 

. 

71 

Psalms  xi.  7 ;  xix. 

9 

80 

xvi.  3     . 

32 

xxiv.  1,  2 

24 

xvii.  17,  24    . 

32,  83 

xxxiv.  12-16 

.       100 

xxi.  6     . 

• 

32 

xxxvii.  16 

54 

xxiii.  7,  33-35 

32,  79 

xlv.   7     . 

80 

xxiv.  4  . 

79 

1.   7-23    . 

24,  86 

1  Chronicles  iv.  39-43 

31 

Ii.    16-19 

86 

V.  10-22,  25,  26 

31,  33 

Ixvii.  4 

80 

vi.  54-81 

72 

Ixviii.   11 

19 

xi.   4       . 

31 

Ixix,   30,   31  . 

86 

xxiii. 

71 

Ixxii. 

80,  82 

2  Chronicles  ii.  10 

,  17,  18 

31,  34 

Ixxviii.   55-64 

33 

viii.  7,  8,  18  . 

31,  36 

Ixxxii.  1-4     . 

81 

ix.   21     . 

36 

Ixxxix.  11,  12,  14, 

15 

24,  81 

X.  16       . 

35 

xcv.   5    . 

24 

XV.  3  ;  xxiii.  4 

71 

xcvi.  10,  13    . 

80 

xix.  8-10 

71 

cii.  25     . 

24 

XXV.  22 

35 

civ.  14,  15,  29 

21,  22 

xxvi.  10,  21   . 

37,  71 

cvi.  34-39       . 

32 

xxviii.  3 

32 

cxv.   16 

25 

xxxi.  5,  6 

72 

cxix.  7,  62,  106,  1 

60,  164      80 

xxxiii.  6 

32 

cxxiv.  8 

24 

xxxvi.  5,  14,  21 

.'    33, 

65,  79 

cxxvii.  3-5     . 

35 

Ezra  ii.  1 

35 

cxlv.  9,   17 

80,  81 

iii.  1-4,  8       . 

60,  71 

cxlvi.  4 

22 

iv.  8-10 

83 

Proverbs  iii.  29,  31, 

32 

79,  83 

V.  12;  ix.  7,  15 

33,  80 

iv.  18      . 

81 

Nehemiah  ii.   8 

26 

X.   6,  7,  15     . 

79,  96 

V. 

.     56 

70,98 

xi.  1,  24,  26  . 

53,  78 

vii.  6 

35 

xii.  10,  11,  28 

46 

82,  85 

viii.  7,  8,  10-18 

.    60, 

66,  72 

ix.  6,  8,  25,  37 

.    24, 

3-1,  80 

xiii.  23    . 

53,  93 

X.  31,  35,  37,  38 

xiv.  34     .       . 

85 

29,  61, 

65,  72 

xvi.  8,  11 

54,  78 

xi. 

99 

XX.  10       .       . 

78 

xiii.  5,  10,  12,  15 

16,  22 

,  44 

xxi.  3,  25,  26 

33,  86 

.    36, 

61,  72 

xxii.  28  ;  xxiii.  10  . 

40 

Job  i.  3      . 

34 

xxvii.  18 

47 

viii.  3     . 

80 

xxviii.  19 

46 

XX. 

94 

xxix.  7  . 

82 

xxii.   6   . 

82 

xxx.  8,  9 

53 

xxiv.  2-17 

40,  82, 

92,  93 

xxxi.  24 

36 

xxviii.  1-6     . 

21 

Ecclesiastes  i.  4 

21 

xxxiv.  15 

22 

ii.  5 

26 

xxxvii.   23     . 

80 

iii.  13,  20 

22,  26 

Psalms  viii.  6-8 

27 

v.  9,  12,  13,  18       . 

26, 

28,  5:^ 

ix.  4,  8,  18... 

80,  9C. 

vii.  29     .         .         . 

48 

X.  3 

33 

X.  18       . 

55 

106 


JEWISH  AUTHORITIES  QUOTED— Continued 


PAOB 

PAGt 

Ecclesiastes  xii.  7 

22 

Lamentations  iii.  35, 

36  . 

86 

Isaiah  i.  10-17,  23, 

24        86,  90 

V.  1-5     . 

96 

ii.  4 

65,  102 

Ezekiel  vii.  2,  3, 

12,  13      . 

51 

iii.  12-15, 16-iv.  1 

.    47,  91,  90 

xiv.  21    .        . 

33 

V.  7 

79 

xvi.  29 ;  xvii. 

4      . 

36 

V.  8,  9,  10      . 

16,  40,  42, 

xviii.  1-4 

35 

53,  65,  91,  93 

XX.  6,  10-12, 

15     . 

34,  61 

viii.  20    . 

11 

xxii.  29,  31     . 

33 

ix.   7       . 

82 

xxvii.  17 

34 

X.  1,  2     . 

91 

xxviii.  25,  26 

99 

xi.  4,  5  . 

82 

xxxiv.  17-22, 

27,  28     93,  101 

xix,  11,  12     . 

19 

xxxvi.  28,  29, 

30  . 

99.  101 

xxiii.  2,  8,  11,  18 

30 

xxxix.  23 

33 

xxvi.  9 ;  xxviii  16,  17 

82 

xliv.  24,  28    . 

71,  74 

XXX.  24 

65 

xlv.  8-12,  25 

60,  78, 

xxxii.  1,  9-18 

83,  96,  102 

79, 

93,  99 

xxxiii.  15,  16 

82,  85 

xlvi.  1,   16-18 

49,  57. 

61,90 

xli.  21     . 

35,  49 

xlvii.  14,  22,  ) 

23 

30,  38 

xlii.  5,  22       . 

24,  94 

xlviii.  1-7,  23 

29 

38 

xliv.  9-20 

33 

Daniel  ix.  4-15 

33 

xlv.  12,  18,  21 

.    24,  26,  80 

Hosea  ii,  11,  19 

61,  81 

xlviii.  10 

60 

iv.  13,  14 

32 

Iviii.  2,  5-12 

81,  86 

V.  10       . 

40 

Iviii.  13,  14    . 

61 

vi.  6 

86 

Ixi.  2,  8 

57,  86 

viii.  4,  6 

33,  49 

Ixii.  8,  9 

99 

X.  12,  13,  14 

81,  83 

Ixv.  21-23,  25 

47,  100,  102 

xi.   1 

35 

Ixvi.  1,  2 

25 

xii.   6,   7 

36,  78 

Jeremiah  ii.  4  . 

34 

xiii.  10,  11 

49 

V.  1-6,  26-29 

33,  92 

xiv.  9     . 

81 

vi.  11-13 

33 

Joel  iii,  10 

65 

vii. 

33,  86 

Amos  i.  1 

37 

viii.  13    . 

33 

ii.  6-8     . 

91 

ix.  24     . 

80,  81 

iii.  9,  10,  15 

79,  93 

x.  12       . 

24 

iv.  1-4,  6 

73,  96 

xi.  4,  5  . 

34,  60 

vi  11,  12 

47, 

80,  94 

xiv. ;  XV.  3     . 

33 

V.    21-24 

86 

xvii.  11,  19-27 

54,  61 

vi.   1-13 

65,  95 

xix.  6  ff. 

33 

vii.  1,  14-17 

37, 

38,  49 

xxii.  3,  13-19 

33,  49,  79,  90 

viii.  4,  5,  6 

61.  78 

xxiii.  5  . 

82 

ix,  7,   13-15 

56,  101 

xxxi.  4,  5,  12-14 

100 

Obadiah   10 

35 

xxxi.  29,  30  . 

35 

Jonah  i.  9 

24 

xxxii.  6-12     . 

35 

Micah  i.  5,  7 

32 

xxxii.  35 

32 

ii,   iii. 

42,  91 

xxxiii.  15,  16 

82 

ii,   2,   5  . 

33, 

38,  40 

xxxiv.  8-22    . 

64,  65 

iii.  9,   10 

79 

107 


JEWISH  AUTHORITIES  QUOTED— Continued 


PAGE 

PAGB 

Micah  iv.  3,  4  . 

. 

B5, 

102 

Zechariah  vii.  8-14   . 

. 

33 

vi.  6-12,  10-15 

47, 

78 

86 

viii.  4,  5,  10-12,  1  6  17 

Habakkuk  i.  1-6 

33 

85,  100, 

101 

ii.  9,  18-20 

33 

xiv.  21    . 

. 

36 

Zephaniah  i.  11,  1?> 

'36 

47 

Malachi  ii.  7,  10 

57 

71 

iii.   5 

. 

81 

iii.  5       .        .        . 

94 

Zechariah  iii.  10 

• 

102 

iv.   2       . 

82 

APOCRYPHA 

1  Esdras   iv.   62 

40 

Ecclesiasticus   xvii.  1 

22 

2  Esdras  vi.  55,  59 

26, 

77 

xxxii.  16 

81 

vii.   11-14      .. 

37 

xxxiii.  10,  30,  31 

22, 

57 

X.  10,  14 

22 

xxxiv.  21,  22 

47 

xiv.  28-33       . 
Tobit  i.  7,  8     . 

33 
73 

xxxvii.  25 

27 

iii.   2 

80 

XXX viii.  24-34 

59 

iv.   14,   15 

56, 

84 

xl.  i.       . 

21 

Judith  iv.  10     . 

34, 

35 

xii.  10    . 

22 

viii.  6     . 

61 

xiv.  17,  20-22 

71, 

74 

Esther  xvi.  15 

80 

xlvi.  19 

91 

Wisdom  xii.  3-7 

32 

1.  25,  26 

83 

xiii.  lOff 

33 

1  Maccabees  vi,   49 

53 

65 

XV.  8      . 

22 

xiv.  9,  12,  13 

100, 

102 

Ecclesiasticus.     Pro 

logu( 

13 

2  Maccabees  x.  6-8 

60 

vii.  15    . 

37 

XV.  38,  39       . 

89 

NE 

W  TESTAMENT 

Matthew  v.  13,  17, 

Luke  iii.  12,  13 

. 

75 

20,     21,     36,     37, 

iv.   18,   19       . 

, 

57 

43-45       . 

15, 

21, 

33, 

vi.  1,  34,  35    . 

82 

83, 

84, 

86 

ix.  51-56,  62 

65, 

83 

vi.  24-34 

86 

X.   25-37 

, 

83 

vii.  12     . 

83 

xi.  41,  42 

81, 

86 

xviii.   25 

56 

xii.  15,  22-31 

33, 

86 

xix.   19  . 

83 

XV.   17-19       . 

56 

XX.  2,  8-13     . 

56 

xvi.    13,    14,    19-31,  29 

xxii.   23-27,   37, 

39,  41 

3 

11, 

15, 

34 

35, 

67, 

83 

xix.  8,  1-10   . 

70, 

75 

xxiii.  4-14,  23-33 

86 

XX.  27ff.,  47  . 

35, 

86 

XXV.  31-46      . 

85 

John  iv.  9 

, 

83 

Mark  ii.  27 

61 

viii,  32,  48 

11, 

83 

vii.  22     .         . 

33 

Acts  iii.   14 

82 

X.    5        .         .         . 

46 

vii.  22,  52 

19, 

82 

xii.  29,  30,  31-34,  : 

38-40 

xvii.  6,  24,  26,  28   . 

57, 

77, 

83 

67, 

83, 

86 

xviii.  3;   xx  33-3f 

) 

62 

108 


JEWISH  AUTHORITIES  QUOTED-Continued 


PACK 

Acts  xxii.  14    . 

82 

xxiv.   14 

84 

Romans  i.  25,  29 

33 

X.  12       . 

83 

xiii.  9,  10 

84 

XV.    4 

11 

1  Corinthians  v.  10, 

11;  vi.  9,  10      , 

, 

34 

ix.   7-10 

48 

X.  26,  28 

24 

xi.  30      . 

49 

XV.   47-49 

22 

2  Corinthians  iii.  17 

46 

xii.  2 

25 

Galatians  iii.  28 

57, 

83 

V.  13,  14 

84 

Ephesians  iv.  28 

62 

V.  3,  5     . 

33 

vi.   2       . 

35 

PhiHppians  iv.  8 

81 

Colossians  iii,  1-6,  t 

5,  11* 

33,  78, 

83 

1  Thessalonians  iv.  : 

11,  12 

62 

2  Thessalonians  iii. 

6,  7  8,  lOff 

49, 

62 

1  Timothy  v.  8,  18 

vi,  9,  10,  17  .       34,  48, 

62,  94 

2  Timothy  ii.  6,  19  . 

48,  86 

Titus  iii.  14 

62 

Philemon  16     . 

57 

Hebrews  i,  10  . 

24 

iii.  4       .        .         . 

55 

vi.  12     .        .         . 

51 

X.   22      . 

68 

xi.   24-27 

20 

xiii.  15,  16     . 

86 

James  i.  27       . 

86 

ii.  8 

84 

V.  1-5     . 

94 

1  Peter  i.  17      . 

81 

ii.  16       .         .         . 

84 

iii.  10-12 

100 

2  Peter  i.  21     . 

11 

ii.  14      .        .         . 

34 

1  John  iv.  8,  12,  16,  20     . 

84 

Jude  5,  7   . 

33 

Revelation  xv.  3, 

4;  xix.  2     .         .         . 

84 

ENTRA-CANONICAL 


Book  of  Jubilees  ...      50 

Josephus,  Antiquities  37,  38,  39, 

43,  50,  54,  56,  64,  65,  66,  73 

Josephus,  Jewish  War      .      65 


Josephus,  Against  Apion      36, 

69,  71,  80 

The  Talmud  [incl.  Sayings 

J.  F.]       .       .       22,  26,  57,  59, 

61,  62,  64,  65,  77 


MODERN 


Adler,  Rev.  Dr.  .  .  .  68 
Gollancz,  H.  ....  61 
Jewish  Chronicle  .  .  68 
Jewish  Encyclopcedia  .  51, 
65,  79 
Jewish  Quarterly  Reviczv      83 


Maimonides  ....  27 
Montefiore,  C.  G.  .  .  8.1 
Salomons,  Rev.   B.  J., 

Notes  by      .      .      22,  26,  52, 
56.  57,  62 


109 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Abraham,  land  bought  by,     27 
Adamah;  Adam,  22,  27. 
Agriculture,  Hebrew,  36,  37,  64. 
Agur,  prayer  of,  53. 
Amos,  37. 

Animals,  kindness  to,  82. 
Artaxerxes,  80. 
Ash-Wednesday,  13. 
Auchmuty,  Rev.  A.  C,  33. 

Bacon's  Henry  VII.,  85. 

Baret's  Alvearie,  85. 

Bennett,  Rev.  Prof.,  18. 

Bible  as  text-book  of  Ethics,  15 

Blackstone,  28. 

Blood-feud,  blood-revenge, 
35,    72. 

Book  of  the  Covenant;  of  or- 
igins, 17. 

Book  of  Jasher;  Wars  of  the 
Lord,    17. 

Bribery,  80,  90. 

Brotherhood  of  man,  22,  25,  56, 
57,  83. 

Building  By-laws,  82. 

Cain,  37. 

Canaan,  fertihty  of,  35. 

conquest  of,  31. 

survey  and  division  of ,  37,38 
"Canaanite"   (=merchant),  36. 
Catechism,  Church,  62,  87. 
Cheyne,   Prof.,  18. 
Chrysostom,  St.,  21. 
Cincinnatus,  37. 
Cities  of  Refuge,  72. 
Coke's  Littleton,  52. 
Cook,  S.  A.,  20,  46,  78. 
Covetousness  is  idolatry,  33,  34, 

77,  79. 


David,  37. 
Deutsch,  E.,  20. 
diVatos,  diKaioavvT],  79,  85. 
Dove,  Patrick  Edward,  22. 
Driver,  Prof.  S.  R.,  19,  20,  51, 
68. 

"Ear"  (=plough),  61,  65. 
Easter   lessons,   77. 
Education,  Hebrew,  68. 
Egypt,  Israel  in,  60. 
Elisha,   37. 
Elohist,  17. 
Emerson,  73. 
Ewald  H.,  34,  49,  50,  51. 

Fatherhood  of  God,  22,  57,  83. 
Family,  the  Hebrew,  34. 
Festivals,  Hebrew,  59,  60. 
First-fruits,  29. 

Garden  of  Eden,  26,  27. 

Gebul,  40. 

George,   Henry,  22,  29,   ^5,  52, 

87,   88. 
Gibeonites,  31. 
Gideon,  36,  49. 
Gleaning,  82. 
Glenbeigh  evictions,  45. 

Hammurabi,    Code  of,    20,  46, 

78. 
Hancock,  Rev.  Thos.,  57. 
"Heaven  of  heavens,"  25. 
Heine,  Heinrich,  52,  53. 
Horton,  Rev.  R.  F.,  91. 
Hull,   Prof.  E.,  39. 

Idleness  and  theft,  62. 
Idolatry,  Canaanite,  31,  32. 
Hebrew,  31,  33. 


110 


NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS— Continued 


Improvements,      compensation 

for,  54. 

distinguished  from  land,  55. 
"Inheritance,"  51. 

of  Levites,  74. 
Interest.    (See  Usury.) 
Isaiah,  41,  53. 

Jacob,  27,  40,  48. 
Jahn,   52. 
Jehoiakim,   79. 
Jehovist,  17. 
Joseph,  56. 
Joshua,    19,   30,   38. 
Jubilee,  Diamond,  49. 
Jubilee,  year  of,   49ff. 
"Just,"  "justice,"  79,  84. 

Keil,  64. 

Kennedy,  Prof.,  38. 

KXTjpovofjiia,  51. 

Kemosh  (Chemosh),  31. 

Labour  Laws,  56. 
Landmarks,  Babylonian,  40. 

Egyptian,   39. 
Landmark,  Hebrew,  39. 

Roman,  40. 

in   Durham,  40. 
Land  value,  Josephus  on,  38. 

private  appropriation  of,  45. 

taxation  of,  45,  74,  88. 
Law,  of  Moses,  20,  66. 
Hebrew  and  English,  28,  52, 
74,  75. 
Hebrew  and  Roman,  53. 

principles     and     "precepts," 
21,  43ff. 
Lent  Lessons,  13. 
Leprosy,  71. 

Levi,  tribe  of,  36,  44,  70. 
Levirate  marriage,  35. 
Levites*  houses,  55. 
Liturgical  forms,  67. 
Locke,  John,  22. 


Macaulay,  65. 
Manetho,  19,  71. 


Man-stealing,  56. 
Maoris,  52. 
Margoliouth,  Dr.  16. 
Martin,  Prof.  G.,  Currie,  28. 
Maxims  of  English  law,  52,  75. 
M-^  fjLepL/jLvdre,  85. 
Mesha,  K.  of  Moab,  31. 
Messianic  hope,  82. 
Micah,  40,  41,  86. 
Moabite  stone,  31. 
Monarchy,  49,  90. 
Moses,    Deliverer    and    Law- 
giver, 19. 

Naaman,  88. 
Naboth's  vineyard,  40. 
Navy,  Hebrew,  36. 
Nehemiah,   76,  97flF. 
Noah's  vineyard,  37. 

Oehler,  27.  34,  52. 
Ogilvie,  William,  22. 
Onesimus,  57. 
Ottley,  Canon,  18. 

"Pair  of  shoes,"  91. 
Pawning,  pledging,  47,  82. 
Peake,  Prof.  A.  S.,  92. 
Pentateuch,  sources  of,   17. 
Perjury,  80. 
Petty,  Sir  W.,  23. 
Pharisees,  86. 
Pliny,  16,  65. 
Plough,  65. 
Poor-tithe,    72. 
Purchases  Pilgrimage,  85. 

Renan,  E.,  40. 

"Righteous,"      "righteousness," 

79,  85. 
Ritual  of  the  Dead,  20. 
Robinson,  Prof.  Wheeler,  31. 

Sabbatarianism,  true,  61  ff. 
Sabbath-day,  59ff. 
Sabbath-year,  63flf. 
Sacrifices,  67,  86. 
Sale  of  land  forbidden,  27,  51. 


Ill 


NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS— Continued 


Salisbury,  Lord,  24. 

Samaritans,  83. 

Samuel,  36. 

Sanitary  laws,  70,  71. 

Saul,  36. 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  85. 

Shakespeare,  47,  85. 

Shema,  56,  67. 

Single  Tax,  88. 

Sins  that  are  cursed,  14,  40. 

Slavery,  permitted  but  restrict- 
ed, 46,  56,  57. 

Smith,  Prof.  G.  A.,  91. 

Somers'  Tracts,  85. 

Song  of  Deborah,  17. 

Spence,  Thomas,  22. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  22,  24,  26,  84. 
87,  88. 

Strachey,  Sir  E.,  42. 

"Strangers,"  20,   55,  78,  80,  81. 

Sutherland  clearances,  44,  45. 

Sweating,  47. 

"Take  no  thought,"  85. 
Taylor,  57. 
Tefillah,  56. 

"Tent  of  Meeting,"  70. 
Theocracy,  Hebrew,  28,  29,  48, 
49. 


Tithe,  its  meaning,  72ff. 
Torah  (=:Law),  18,  59,  67,  77. 

Uncleanness   (=:Sin),  68. 
Usury   (=Interest),  76,  78,  82, 

98. 
"Utterly  destroy,"  31. 
Uzziah,  37. 

Vergil,  16,  27,  65. 

Wage-slavery,  56. 
Wallace,  Prof.  A.  R.,  22. 
War,  laws  of,  30,  37. 
Weights  and  measures,  78,  93. 
Westcott,  Bp.,  32,  51. 
Wicksteed,  Rev.  P.  H.,  18,  64. 
Williams,  Joshua,  28. 
Winstanley,  Gerrard,  22. 
Women's  rights,  38. 
Workmen,  inspired,  68. 

Yashar,  78. 

Yahweh  (:=  Jehovah),  31. 
Year  of  release,  63  ff. 
Yoke  of  land,  65. 

Zacchaeus,  75. 

Zadak,  78. 

Zelophehad's  daughters,  38.  ' 


112 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

4/on'63fl8f 

Aic'd     iJh 

Mb3    /''.<♦ 

7  7 

NOV  1  5 198V 

W/r 

KTO    DEC  1  5  W 

1 

KatuTMdby 

JUN  0  fi  1991 

£anta  Cruz  JitlMW 

LD  21A-50m-ll,'62 
(D32798l0)476B 

General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 

nil  Hill  III 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBRARY 


